Episode 1527 Scott Adams - Today I Will Test My Fake News Filter on the Lying Megaturds in the Media

everybody and welcome to the best thing ever the best thing in your entire lives it's called the it's called coffee with scott adams and that's why you're here because today we're going to be taking on the lying mega turds in the media with that's right the fake news filter we're going to test it out but before we do that let's go brandon and let's have the simultaneous zip and all you need is a couple of mugger glass attacker chelsea fan canteen geoflask vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dope media of the day the thing makes everything better you know it it makes everything better it's called the simultaneous step it happens right now go i feel connected the meaning of life has been restored for a moment there i was just sort of floating did you feel it you felt a little disconnected didn't feel like the meaning of life was was having any impact on you but now now you feel good don't you yeah the meaning of life has been restored and let's talk about all the news how many of you saw my dead on impersonation of kamal harris talking to the nasa space program kids i hope you suck i don't like to say instant classic about everything but instant classic and it was even cringier than i had imagined you've probably heard by now that the uh the child uh the kids in the video were child actors they were not in fact any members of this nasa space board that's right what you saw was kamala harris being really excited really excited for these kids who are actors that someday they're gonna they're gonna answer all these questions about space and they're gonna they can see with road eyes things on the moon the crater you're going to see greater except no you won't because you're child actors it was the cringiest fakest most ridiculous thing you've ever seen but did you notice the composition of the kids did you notice anything no anything interesting about the composition of the kids somebody said multi-racial that's almost what i'm looking for i don't believe there was a white boy in the group am i wrong i didn't see one in the pictures did they really assemble a multi-racial stem group and basically people interested in science and they didn't include a white male kid they didn't have enough kids to spread around the ethnicities really no white male kid could even be part of that you just shake your head like what the hell is going on and how the hell could the democrats ever win another election i mean the republicans have to go pretty deep into awfulness to lose against that seriously i could throw a dart into my audience and hit somebody who could do a better job than the democrats are doing right now it doesn't look like it's hard well speaking of disasters how many of you follow the the gossip news and especially the celebrity stuff with megan fox and her new boyfriend machine gun kelly is anybody as hooked on on that as i am it's one of my guilty pleasures by no means is this important and by no means should you bother paying attention to it but but let me say this they are one of the best examples you'll ever see of the basket case theory the basket case theory says that other people seem pretty put together and lucky and hey things are going pretty well for them until you get to know them and then you find out that they're just basket cases well we got a little glimpse of that as if you couldn't tell already that megan fox has body dysmorphia issues fairly serious you know mental disorder if you've got that you're not happy at all and her boyfriend says he's got ptsd from you know past drug use and other experiences so these two people who look like the most lucky people in the world they're rich they're famous they're beautiful they found each other all good stuff right and you you go down this deep you know you just scratch a little bit of the surface off and immediately massive mental problems yeah somebody's saying tommy lee pam pam anderson 2004 yeah now this is nothing against those two people they are two people doing the best you know presumably doing the best they can trying to make this world work but i like to point that out for those of you who feel less lucky i don't know if you would trade places with him i mean i say that about myself if you look at my life how many people would think wouldn't mind having his life things it looks like things worked out pretty well for him how many of you would trade for my life well you don't know my life do you if you had to take the whole thing you you don't get to pick and choose right you don't get to pick the good parts you don't get just the money and the fame you got to take it all would you trade with me if you're dumb you would i got some issues too more of my issues are in my past than my present but if you had to take my whole life no you wouldn't take it trust me but at the moment it's pretty good relatively relatively speaking i'm not sure what pretty good even looks like because you can't do any of us have a problem-free life i don't think any of us don't have any major problems that we're dealing with right pretty much all of us have some major problems and if you don't have major problems your minor problems feel like major problems so we're we're largely in similar situations even if it doesn't look like it it's always good to remember that business insider has a story about teachers reporting just massive mental health problems with kids now this is the least surprising story of 2021 that the children apparently have been quite damaged psychologically by the pandemic and here's the question that i ask you we have gym class did you ever think gym class was sort of doesn't really fit exactly with school i mean i get it you know you want to teach them to be physically fit you need to get them you know standing up and away from their desks and you know they can socialize a little bit better in gym than they can in the rest of the classes there are tons of reasons that gym class is good so i'm in favor of it but don't we need a mental health class don't we need the equivalent of gin class for your brain right it's not good enough just the the reading and writing and arithmetic i mean that stuff's good but yeah we have health class which is good i think the content in health class is probably very beneficial but how many of the kids are being taught the techniques of good mental health because there is technique and i always get in trouble for this so i'll be as i'll be as clear as i can because people are going to conflate my opinion with some opinion that's not mine and suddenly i'm in trouble it goes like this i want to be very clear that if somebody has a you know organic serious mental disorder that they're not going to fix that by you know getting more sleep and improving their nutrition probably as far as i know that doesn't work so we're not talking people who've got the real serious you better see a medical professional right away kind of problem i'm talking about the people who maybe think they ought to need to see a professional but they're not quite there and and maybe it's not a organic problem maybe it's situational that's a lot of people there's a lot of people so i'm not not talking about the deep depression stuff where you know you really need some help i'm talking about the people who just couldn't get through the pandemic without some mental damage and can't get through modern life and managing their smartphones and their social lives and everything without actual mental damage why can't we teach kids the basics of good mental health let me ask you this how many just in the comments let me know how many of you have kids let's say between 10 and 17.

how many of you in the comments because i i don't know if this crowd has a lot of kids oh they do a lot of kids i'm seeing lots of yeses and the answers especially on locals so a lot of you have kids in that 10 to 17 range so so you know exactly what i'm talking about here how many of those those kids between 10 and 17 have wildly different sleep schedules on the weekend than they do during the school week in the comments how many of your kids have wildly different sleep patterns on the weekend than the weekdays um i'm seeing i'm actually seeing more no's than i thought interesting i think that suggests maybe a more conservative audience here but yeah it looks like most of you are saying yes to that now are the children being taught in school that having those wildly different sleep patterns guarantee that they'll be depressed guarantee it it's not even it's not even statistically oh you're you've increased the chance that you're going to be depressed and sleepy and unhappy and have mental problems i'm not talking about increasing the odds i'm talking about you got it you you you messed up your sleeping pattern and now you have some mental problems one-to-one correlation now ideally they're temporary right they're more the kind that you could fix with lifestyle and then some work what about nutrition do you think that kids are completely unaffected mentally by a bad diet of course they are of course they are and again i'm not even sure that you'd say that's a statistical thing as much as a one-to-one thing right it's not statistically true that if you overeat you get you get fat it's true for every person who does it right every individual if they eat twice as much as the caloric recommended intake they'll get fat so why are we not teaching kids if you do the things on this checklist you're going to feel exactly the way you're feeling right now do the things on the checklist you know have have sleep that's wildly different on the weekends eat junk food and i could fill out the rest of the list but here's the checklist it's just a checklist it is that simple did you do these things no no you didn't do the things on this list that everybody has to do to feel good you didn't do them nobody can feel good unless they do what's on the list and all of it really all of it you can't eat wrong and then try to get the other stuff right it works probably won't work right you can't get no exercise and think well i did everything else right nope nope that's not going to work you have to do all of those things because we're not so naturally happy that you've got any like slop in the system you kind of have to get everything right at least in 2021 i don't know if it's always been the same but we should have a class where we teach them if you do these things you're going to feel this way if you do this set of things you'll feel a different way at least know that you're choosing it because my observation is the kids don't have any connection in their minds they don't connect the things they do with their bodies and their minds with how they feel not really i mean they know that they feel better when they hang out with their friends and they know that if they're hungry it's better to eat but that's about it they're not connecting their mood their entire mental framework to the things they do it just feels like they're disconnected things so we should teach them to connect those things well there's a publication and i use that term loosely called the verge here's a headline from the verge headline on twitter anyway it says netflix suspends trans employee who tweeted about dave chappelle special so netflix suspended a trans employee who i guess complained and tweeted about the dave chappelle special which was on netflix that sounds terrible doesn't it it sounds as if netflix suspended somebody for having an opinion well i mean that's not unusual for a company to fire a disgruntled employee who's complaining in public but given the issue you know it's an issue of you know general societal interest seems inappropriate doesn't it except it didn't happen here's what did happen it is true that netflix suspended that employee it is true that that employee also tweeted about dave chappelle special those are two true things except one didn't cause the other according to netflix what did cause it i think was the way she did it maybe she i know she did something like attended a meeting she wasn't supposed to be at or something so it wasn't her opinion it was the way she managed her you know interactions right so when the verge reports this they make it seem as though these two things are connected when in fact they're just two facts they're not connected they're indirectly connected because i'm sure her whatever her behavior wasn't gotten fired probably sprung from that but it wasn't because the opinion they i and i actually think that netflix does genu this you know who knows i can't read their minds but i think netflix probably genuinely appreciates hearing from their employees on the stuff like this that matters why wouldn't they why wouldn't they right i mean if you're a big company you do you do want to feel out what the employees are thinking especially the stuff that they're really hot about of course you want to know that so of course netflix wanted to know what his employees were thinking about of course and do they mind that the employees are making a statement against discrimination against the trans community probably not i don't think netflix cares let me say it more positively i'm sure netflix management would support people speaking out in favor of treating everybody well now it's a difference of opinion about whether chappelle was treating people well or not but nobody's disagreeing with the concept at least in netflix i don't imagine nobody's disagreeing that you know you shouldn't be unkind to people for no reason so um for the verge i'd like to offer a headline of my own it goes like this two things that are true uh all of the staff of the verge and i'm and i'm pretty sure this is true maybe not a hundred percent but close to a hundred percent a hundred percent of the staff of the verge masturbated after the holocaust that's true that is completely true now not 100 but almost every member of the verge masturbated after the holocaust i don't think we can feel good about that can we now i'm not saying because of not because of it was just after they're just two facts that happened i'm just reporting two facts you deal you do what you want with the facts if you're connecting them in your mind well that's on you i'm just telling you that the entire staff of the verge masturbated after the holocaust i don't know how you feel good about that um david leonard which is a cool name because it's i assume that's based on lion heart at some point in history but david leonhart who's a senior writer at the new york times and therefore we should all listen to him he did a tweet thread in which he's showing he's making the point that science doesn't know why the coveted cases suddenly dropped they also don't know why they spiked and they won't know why they dropped next time and they won't know why they spiked next time now of course the delta variant is part of the story but even if you factor in all the things we do know according to a senior writer at the new york times who i agree with and therefore he must be right using my confirmation bias i agree with him so therefore this must be true news um so basically he's making the case that we don't know why it plunges up and we don't know why it plunges down do you believe that how many of you accept the the beginning premise how many of you accept the premise that the experts don't really know why things are going up and down the way they're going up and down everybody on board with that yeah so anybody who says it's because of masks it's because of mandates it's because of vaccinations those are all variables we don't know what weight to put in all the variables exactly but we don't know why anything's going up and down now if you agree with that here's the next part you should agree with logically that the two people who got the nobel prize for economics didn't deserve it and i do and i'm not kidding who was the person who told you often and publicly and i think the only one and fact check me on both of these claims number one claim i'm the only one to say this and i said it early and publicly that we'd never know how much impact leadership had on different countries outcomes because it would be too complicated who else said that name one other person who told you at the beginning of the pandemic that at the end we wouldn't know who did a good job nobody else i'm the only one who told you that pretty sure and it's completely opposite of what the uh of what the guys who just won the nobel prize in economics would have told you they would have told you because this is what they won their prize for that you just take two areas that are largely the same you say oh this one had this policy and this one had this one and then because the areas are largely the same you could observe the differences and then you'd know something and i told you exactly the opposite i told you that in complex systems there's no way you can compare them because you're just guessing that the other stuff doesn't matter and guessing's the opposite of science it's the opposite it's literally you could not be more opposite of science of just sitting there and guessing well i'm looking at norway and i'm sweden and i'm gonna guess that there are no variables except the ones that i've decided are important i'm just going to guess because you know i don't know of any so i just guess there aren't any that's not a real control group that is somebody guessing and then laundering their gas with science that's right the guys who won the nobel prize in economics are teaching you how to launder fake news through science and they got a nobel prize for it that prize should be mine damn it no i don't really mean that except it's true i don't mean it but it does it also has the benefit of being 100 true as far as i know all right um i tweeted and got just a huge reaction to this tweet i said dear government what level of virus risk do we need to reach before ending all mandates and restrictions if you don't have a target don't expect compliance don't expect compliance if you don't have a target what do you think a lot of people retweeted this so it looked popular but i would say this is basic leadership it's the most basic leadership i'm going to ask you to do this really hard thing and the reason we're going to ask you to do it is to achieve this goal win a war for example stop climate change from you know getting above a certain level for example pretty specific if somebody asks you for a sacrifice and they say i need you to get this out do the sacrifice because we're trying to achieve this specific thing you can say to yourself yes or no i would like to help you achieve that specific thing but if your so-called leaders say i would like you to make this big sacrifice and you say great until when and what target are we going for and they say we'll let you know we'll get back to you on that we'll see how it works out it's flexible it's fluid you know situation is fluid we don't know will there be another variant don't want to make any promises because it might be another variant don't know right so we don't want to make any promises because we don't know what the future looks like but we'd like to make this big sacrifice to get to this future that we can't see nope not acceptable not even a little bit acceptable you need to tell us what you're shooting for now will i forgive you if you have to change later and modify it and say oh damn we thought we could get to this but now we're a little smarter we learn something we have to modify the goal okay okay that would be just normal how many projects in your big corporation end up exactly the way you planned them none none but every corporation tells you you better have a you better have an endpoint i'm not gonna i'm not gonna give you a bunch of money unless you show me a business plan with a specific target of how much money or roi you're gonna shoot for right there's no leadership in any country in any company that lacks an endpoint that's described pretty specifically but also everybody knows you're not going to hit it you need it even if you know you're not going to hit it because it gives you a direction now the government would like you to be happy with well we're going to save as many lives as we can no no try that in your corporation oh we don't need a business plan we're just going to make as much money as we can we want to be flexible don't want to lock ourselves into a specific thing we just want to make as much money as we can that's our plan that's not really a plan right so um don't expect massive compliance with no target now if we made a target what are the likelihood that we'd have to revise it later i think it's a hundred percent but has nothing to do with whether or not you should have one right because that you always miss your target if you're a corporation or anything else you just need them so john gruden coach of the raiders resigned some emails from his past were made public and they uh had things which people are calling misogynistic and anti-anti-gay and a little bit racist they thought now here's my take on that i do not defend or condone anything that john gruden said privately likewise i do not defend or condone anything that any of you have ever said privately i don't condone it but i also don't condemn it anything you say privately with the expectation that it would remain private is okay with me it's okay with me what if it's really really offensive okay with me what if it's really really insulting to me like just really racist and sexist and totally insulting about me specifically in your private communications okay with me 100 i want you to be able to say anything you want privately if you say it in public then we have something to talk about but privately no you can say anything you want about me it could be the darkest most insulting deeply offensive thing you that anybody's ever said about anybody i'm cool with that just don't tell me about it and you know ideally don't tell other people that might tell me about it right you know now i get that sometimes things get out that you thought would be private but i'm not going to blame you for that if you had an expectation of privacy you know who i'm going to blame i'm going to blame the mofo who told me that's the author of the message the author of the message is not the person who sent it first privately because the expectation of privacy was there but the the mofo the a-hole the mega turd who told me about it that's who created the damage the person who creates the damage is the mega turd who tells you about it period that's got to be the standard we can't let ourselves have a standard where people's private communications affect their job or their standing in society no that that's a hard no so um i i see why the raiders had to do what they do because you know they they have to respond to the fact that their you know customers will um you know they're gonna the customers are gonna have you know some reaction and they don't want to lose their customers et cetera so i think big companies sometimes just have to do things that aren't fair to employees because it's good for the you know to an individual employee because the stockholders or the bigger picture requires it i guess so i don't love what the raiders did but i understand it right i'm not sure i would have gone the same way if i'd been in charge of the raiders maybe i would have tried to take a stand but i don't i don't blame them you know companies got to take care of themselves that's what they're designed to take care of themselves and you wouldn't want to change that so here's the here's the standard i say number one private communication should stay private or if your private communications are not going to stay private the who leaks them is the author the who leaks them has to take responsibility for all of the racism misogyny everything else now if you look at the actual content of the messages did did they look racist to me nope nope they did look exactly like the things you should never say in public let me give you one of them one of them one was that i guess john gruden in an email said something about a black player's the size of his lips and that was considered racist do you know when that would be racist for sure as if he said it in public i would call that racist because you would be saying something that you know would be offensive to you know an entire ethnicity plus anybody who has you know any sense of decency but not privately not privately when you change the context to privately it's just an observation there's nothing in this story that suggests he has a bad feeling about black people because one of them has a feature which is notable i just don't see it but now do you see the point that that exact thing he said privately doesn't have a trace of of racism in it but if he had ever said that in any mixed crowd or in public yeah a very racist very bad move let me give you another one he used the word queer when referring to a gay person who is going to be drafted i guess drafted does the word queer suggest that he doesn't like or doesn't respect gay people maybe i don't know i mean you could certainly interpret it that way if he had used that word in public what would i say about him i'd say he's very apparently very anti-lgbtq or at least anti-gay and he needs to he needs to you know have some consequences i mean that would seem pretty racist or i'm sorry it would seem pretty anti-gay to me now i know what you're thinking you're saying that the gay community uses that word themselves exactly that's why when he used it privately it didn't look the same to me privately people use words that are offensive just because they're more interesting have you ever used an offensive word with somebody who's a friend just this more interesting word that's it no real intent behind it it's just a more interesting word this is more fun it's more provocative right so um again i don't condone anything that john gruden said because i don't want to be you know tarred with any of that but i'll say that as a consumer of this information i looked at the things that were noted and i did not see the things he was accused of but had he said any of that in public of course it would look awful all right um i saw an article in the new york times i guess it was written a while ago about uh microsteps and micro micro goals and they mentioned the uh they were influenced by the book atomic habits by james clear and um the idea is that you that you if you want to get something done getting started is the important part and that if you can get any kind of momentum toward your goal um that it's self-reinforcing you get a little dope being hit for making any progress so the atomic habits a big part of it was just do something a small little thing get a phone number you know make yourself a note just whatever's the smallest thing you can do toward your goal and eventually it'll get a little momentum going and it'll it'll be self-fulfilling after a point very good advice now that was in the atomic habits in 2018.

now um james clear has always from the beginning credited the micro steps idea as part of the systems versus goal idea from my book had failed almost everything and still went big it came out five years earlier now i think it was very smart of james clear to pick that you know pick that part of um part of what was in my book and amplify it because you know i just sort of mentioned it and described it a little bit but it did deserve its own book and i and i think that let me say as clearly as possible there aren't that many new ideas yeah almost any time somebody has an idea that's like this you know this game-changing idea and they make a book and it's popular you can almost always find out who who influenced that person right there's always something before it same with music seems like all musicians were influenced by somebody else but as i often say an idea is worthless the value of an idea is zero ideas don't have any value so if you say hey this was your idea and then you know james clear took that idea and made a great book out of it well you know maybe in some sense he was influenced by it but the value in the book is how he expressed it the value is the packaging the design the communication so i mean that's all that's where the value comes from so likewise even when i have something that looks like a new idea probably isn't but the value is i communicated it to you that's where the value is but i i'm starting to think that this one thing might be one of the most important things that i've ever done because to the extent that it's influenced other people who then influence other people this is a really good technique you know the micro step idea especially in a world where everything's um complicated and we're busy it's that complication and busyness that stuns us into inaction because there are too many things you could do and there are too many things you could do instead so finding some way to beat the complexity of modern life and finding a way to take that first step did maybe it wasn't always important but right now it's critical so it could turn out to be one of the most important things i've ever done or the most important thing and you know it was one chapter of one book uh let's do the uh the fake news test on an axio story well it's it's a national story but i'm going to use axios as my example now if you don't know i created a first draft and this is just a prototype so we'll be testing we'll be testing the filter as well as the story right if the filter says the story's fake it could be the the filter is the problem not the story so keep in mind that this is all experimental at this point but we'll see what happens so i did a google sheets which i tweeted the link to and you can so you can all go look at it in which uh i've just got a column of sort of a checklist of what to look for to decide if something is fake news and let me first run through it because i've added to it since the last time i told you about it okay so these are it's a growing list of the checklist of things to ask i'll just do them quickly because they're self-explanatory so if you see a new story say ask yourself these questions is the source anonymous is it a disgruntled employee or ex-employee is it only being reported on cnn but not fox or vice versa is it too on the nose it's like too exactly the narrative you know what i mean is it is it confusing correlation with causation is is still the fog of war phase of the story where where we don't know all the facts is it too man bites dog meaning it's just too unbelievable to really really be true is it only covered by the lesser known news sites does the journalists have a grudge against the subject are you still waiting to hear the other side of the story in other words is there somebody who's accused of something and they haven't told you what their side is yet does the story give you a percentage without the raw number that's another one i added does it report a percentage but it doesn't tell you any raw numbers that's a flag and vice versa does it give you raw numbers without putting them in context of what percentage of something that is um let's see does the story have uh sources that have ties to some industry is a story uh from a serial debunker who's selling a book here's a new one i added is the source of the claim a serial debunker somebody who keeps debunking things and writing books about it i don't trust the serial debunkers because once they become the debunking person they have to keep debunking because that's who they are they become the debunking person that's how they make the money so be careful of the serial debunkers not so much somebody who only once is debunking something is the story source politically active you can't trust them and is the primary evidence and is the primary evidence of video so here's one i added that's just mind-blowing one of the checklists to see if it's fake news is if there's a video so you can see it with your own eyes in 2021 if there's a video and you can see it with your own eyes it's probably fake news you would have thought the opposite but in 2021 if you just look at all the examples you can see time after time it's just a video edit they leave out a qualifier or they leave out some context so if the primary evidence is a video there's a good chance it's not true which is weird right all right so that's the filter um let's run this story through it and here's the claim the claim is that southwest airline pilots are intentionally um intentionally basically calling in personal days or sick days i don't know which one definitely some personal days but i don't know if there's sick days too or they're not or they're not accepting flights et cetera so they're basically responding to the vaccine mandate so it's basically a work slow down if you will because they're so many of them don't want to get the force to vaccination to continue working now here's what southwest says there's no pilot action happening no this is weather it's weather duh we just got a weather problem it'll take care of itself we'll be fine next week one of those things isn't true one of those isn't true but let's take the claim that the pilots are doing this intentionally okay and we'll run it through the fake news filter all right so here's the claim is the source anonymous kind of yes but kinda now who exactly is your source who told you that the pilots are organizing this well i've seen reports about individual pilots saying yeah this is happening but they seem to be speculating they didn't seem to say the the ones i saw maybe you saw something different i didn't see anywhere the pilot said yes i'm calling around i'm organizing people we're definitely doing this have you seen that i haven't seen it i've seen unknown sources and something close to anonymous so i'm asking you so somebody says they saw that last night on tucker one on tucker didn't seem to be guessing okay so i'm going to take that as a fact that there's somebody who is not an anonymous source okay or same page so far that it did not it's not an anonymous source okay uh is the source a disgruntled current or ex-employee disgruntled employee disgruntled employee is a big flag so there's one uh i'd watch out for that one disgruntled employee is it only being reported as a fact on one of the networks or neither is cnn and fox news are they both reporting that the pilots are doing an action that the pilots are intentionally doing that anybody does anybody know that is cnn saying that the pilots are doing this intentionally and also fox news cnn is reporting the weather angle can can i get a confirmation on that because i'm only hearing it in a comment can i get anybody else who watches enough cnn uh it looks like cnn's not reporting it is a pilot thing all right you need a time filter maybe all right interesting so we don't know axios is reporting it all right so i'm going to put a question on that one but we'll circle back to that one um is it too on the nose is it is it too like right on yeah it kind of is isn't it isn't the story kind of perfect the airline pilots are often military people and they're ex-military people and they're fighting another you know freedom thing for the united states it's not complicated though it's sort of straightforward hey we don't like this so we're protesting so i'm not going to say it's too on the nose because it's too ordinary like it would be easy to be on the nose in such a simple situation is the correlation being treated as causation hmm i don't think so does it look like there's a correlation versus causation problem i don't see that are we still in the fog of war phase are we in the fog of war where you're not quite sure what's going on yes we are yes we are still in the i'm not so sure what's going on here phase which is a big flag for fake news all right um is it two man by his dog now is it only covered by lesser known news sites no does a journalist have a grudge no are you still waiting to hear the other side of the story no does the story give percentages without raw numbers does it what percentage of the pilots are protesting do you know that would be the biggest part of the story right what percentage of the pilots yeah we have percentages of flights somebody said six thousand out of 140 000.

does it look as though the percentage is being left out of the story or under underreported um yeah so so i do think there might be a little bit of playing with the raw numbers versus percentages the stories i saw didn't seem to do a good job of sorting this out um is the story source of serial debunker no is this is a politically active people now is the primary evidence of video no so we do have several flags there are some flags that would suggest this is fake news doesn't mean it is because remember this is just giving you an indication you can't prove anything with this but how could it be the southwest which does not have a reputation as a big lying company right correct me if i'm wrong southwest actually has a pretty good reputation one of the best right isn't it isn't it often one of the best places to work voted near the top all the time so do you just i i think it's fair to distrust corporations but wouldn't you say southwest is a little bit more on the reliable you know non-lying side of the equation wouldn't you say i feel yes right which doesn't mean they're not lying in this case but i think reputationally they're pretty solid company so how could it be true uh simultaneously that southwest is telling the truth that it's not a pilot action while the pilots are saying oh it's a pilot action trust me i'm a pilot and this is a pilot action how could both be true well let me tell you what if nobody has said to southwest management we're doing this thing what would southwest say if every time they talk to a pilot hey are you doing this because of the vaccine mandate and the pilot looked at them and said vaccine mandate no i'm just i'm just taking my personal days that you've allocated and then the southwest says oh well we heard people are doing this because of the mandate and the pilot looks at them and say yeah i've heard that too i think i'll take my personal days see where i'm going i think they're both true i think that from southwest's point of view they have not been informed there's an employee action so from their point of view there isn't now furthermore they said it's weather could it be true that the problem is weather but also true that the problem is the the pilots yes it can be both here's how suppose there are enough pilots doing the personal days that it puts a strain on the system but not a strain that they couldn't normally handle except the weather was bad too it could be that they had two problems either one of them they could handle because they've got enough flexibility so let's say you've got some bad weather in one place but you need to move some pilots around to adjust for the bad weather you could do it but now they didn't have the flexibility because so many people took personal days do you think that when each pilot went to their supervisor and said i'd like to take a personal day did all the supervisors immediately coordinate with all the other supervisors to find out if too many people were asking for personal days at the same time probably not right so don't you think that if if management asks the supervisors what's going on they say not much few people ask for personal days but that's not that unusual you know wanted to get it in before christmas i i feel as though southwest is maybe giving us a little bit of a weasel answer and that they would certainly be aware that the pilots may be acting in a way that is reducing the number that are available but not so overtly that they're saying we're doing this and on top of that the bad weather may have taken that little bit of you know little extra cushion they had and removed it so could you say the weather is the problem because if the weather had not happened they would still have enough cushion to get things done yeah see it's like it's not so clear is it so i'm not so sure that the the filter works in this case because it's just a murky situation um but i would say there's at least a possibility that both stories are completely true there is a pilot action and from southwest point of view the weather was the problem because they could have handled the pilot action okay without the weather problem see what i mean it's sort of like saying cove had killed you the cove had killed you because you've done everything wrong in your life up to that point you over ate you didn't exercise right so you've done everything wrong and then the last thing that happens is the covet well likewise it's entirely possible that the last thing that happened was the bad weather but they would have been able to handle it should you know if all the other bad things like the pilot actions hadn't happened anyway that's just speculation uh biden is failing on getting us rapid tests i don't know if trump would have done better but this is a clear case of biden failing i mean i think even his friends would say he's not getting it done on the testing so that's a gigantic failure for the biden administration gigantic now would trump have done better i don't know i don't know but we'll never know uh ben and jerry's was defending why it's i don't know boycotting someplace um was it israel or someplace and was asked why don't you stop selling your ice cream in texas because they've got that abortion law and you don't like that and i don't know if it was ben or jerry got really shall we say befuddled because they couldn't answer how they can continue to stay in business selling any ice cream at all when everywhere you sell the ice cream everywhere you sell the ice cream there's somebody doing something you don't like and uh i saw somebody make a comment on twitter that looked like an episode of curb your enthusiasm and boy did it once you hear that comment it didn't look like an episode of curb your enthusiasm the ap is fact checking this claim see if you heard this fake news there's an anti-vaccine website a study on a vietnam and it says that vaccinated people carry more virus than unvaccinated have you ever heard that have you ever heard that unvaccinated people carry more i'm sorry have you ever heard that vaccinated people if they do get infected would carry more of the virus than an unvaccinated person has anybody heard that that because it's not true somebody says obviously yeah so that's fake news here's and here's what the study actually said that compared to the original virus the ones that people are getting these days is the delta variant and that's far more far more infection in especially your mouth and nose i think how satisfied is scott adams with where we are and now of course not i ask because i have considered us to have mostly returned enormously oh well um i can't travel i mean right i can't travel that's not too normal um it looks like our supply chain is pretty effed up i don't know how quickly we'll fix that um and i still wear a mask at the grocery store where i live so anyway so the point is that while it is technically true that people who are getting the virus lately even if they're vaccinated the vaccinated people have tons of virus compared to the last variant but the comparison is the old version to the variant that's the only thing being compared the delta variant gives you more virus it wouldn't matter if you were vaccinated or unvaccinated the delta variant gives you more varia more virus so it seems as though people are vaccinated and they get the breakthrough case it seems like they have more virus than the old days but that's because the delta variant it's not because of anything about the vaccination all right so it's fake news and speaking of fake news i'm gonna have to go that is all for today i am late and i think today was a tremendous live stream i hope you liked it too and i will talk to you tomorrow

everybody and welcome to the best thing

ever the best thing in your entire lives

it's called the

it's called coffee with scott adams and

that's why you're here

because today we're going to be taking

on the lying mega turds in the media

with

that's right

the fake news filter we're going to test

it out

but before we do that

let's go brandon and let's have the

simultaneous zip and all you need is a

couple of mugger glass attacker chelsea

fan canteen geoflask vessel of any kind

fill it with your favorite liquid i like

coffee

and join me now

for the unparalleled pleasure the dope

media of the day the thing makes

everything better

you know it it makes everything better

it's called the simultaneous step it

happens right now go

i feel connected

the meaning of life has been restored

for a moment there i was just sort of

floating

did you feel it

you felt a little disconnected

didn't feel like the meaning of life was

was

having any impact on you

but now

now you feel good don't you yeah the

meaning of life has been restored and

let's talk about all the news

how many of you saw my

dead on impersonation of kamal harris

talking to the nasa

space program kids

i hope you suck

i don't like to say

instant classic

about everything but instant classic

and

it was even cringier than i had imagined

you've probably heard by now that the uh

the child

uh the kids in the video

were child actors

they were not in fact

any members of this nasa space board

that's right

what you saw was kamala harris being

really excited

really excited for these

kids who are actors

that someday they're gonna they're gonna

answer all these questions about space

and they're gonna they can see

with road eyes

things on the moon the crater you're

going to see greater

except

no you won't because you're child actors

it was the cringiest fakest

most ridiculous thing you've ever seen

but did you notice the composition of

the kids

did you notice

anything no anything interesting about

the

composition of the kids

somebody said multi-racial

that's almost what i'm looking for

i don't believe there was a white boy in

the group

am i wrong

i didn't see one in the pictures

did they really assemble a multi-racial

stem group and basically people

interested in science and they didn't

include

a white male kid

they didn't have enough kids to spread

around the

ethnicities

really

no white male kid could even be part of

that

you just shake your head

like what the hell is going on and how

the hell

could the democrats ever win another

election

i mean

the republicans have to go pretty deep

into awfulness to lose against that

seriously

i could throw a dart into my audience

and hit somebody who could do a better

job

than the democrats are doing right now

it doesn't look like it's hard

well

speaking of disasters how many of you

follow the

the gossip news and especially the

celebrity stuff with megan fox

and her new boyfriend

machine gun kelly

is anybody as hooked on on that as i am

it's one of my guilty pleasures

by no means is this important and by no

means should you bother

paying attention to it

but

but

let me say this they are one of the best

examples you'll ever see of the basket

case theory

the basket case theory says that other

people seem pretty put together and

lucky and

hey things are going pretty well for

them

until you get to know them

and then you find out that they're just

basket cases

well we got a little glimpse of that as

if you couldn't tell already that megan

fox has

body dysmorphia issues

fairly serious you know mental disorder

if you've got that you're not happy at

all

and her boyfriend says he's got ptsd

from you know past drug use and other

experiences

so these two people who look

like the most

lucky people in the world

they're rich they're famous they're

beautiful they found each other

all good stuff right

and you you go down this deep you know

you just scratch

a little bit of the surface off and

immediately

massive mental problems

yeah somebody's saying tommy lee pam pam

anderson

2004

yeah now this is nothing against those

two people they are two people doing the

best you know presumably doing the best

they can trying to make this world work

but i like to point that out for those

of you who feel less

lucky i don't know if you would trade

places with him

i mean i say that about myself

if you look at my life how many people

would think

wouldn't mind having his life

things it looks like things worked out

pretty well for him

how many of you would trade for my life

well you don't know my life do you

if you had to take the whole thing

you you don't get to pick and choose

right you don't get to pick the good

parts

you don't get just the money and the

fame you got to take it all

would you trade with me

if you're dumb you would

i got some issues too

more of my issues are in my past than my

present but if you had to take my whole

life no you wouldn't take it trust me

but at the moment it's pretty good

relatively relatively speaking

i'm not sure what pretty good even looks

like because you can't

do any of us have a problem-free life

i don't think any of us don't have any

major problems that we're dealing with

right

pretty much all of us have some major

problems

and if you don't have major problems

your minor problems feel like major

problems so we're

we're largely in similar situations even

if it doesn't look like it

it's always good to remember that

business insider has a

story about

teachers reporting just massive mental

health problems with kids

now this is the least surprising story

of

2021

that the children

apparently have been quite damaged

psychologically by the pandemic

and here's the question that i ask you

we have gym class

did you ever think gym class was sort of

doesn't really fit exactly with school

i mean i get it you know you want to

teach them to be physically fit

you need to get them you know standing

up and away from their desks and you

know they can socialize a little bit

better in gym than they can in the rest

of the classes there are tons of reasons

that gym class is good so i'm in favor

of it

but

don't we need a mental health class

don't we need the equivalent of gin

class for your brain

right it's not good enough just the the

reading and writing and arithmetic i

mean that stuff's good but

yeah we have health class

which is good

i think the content in health class is

probably very beneficial

but

how many of the kids are being taught

the techniques of good mental health

because there is technique

and i always get in trouble for this so

i'll be as i'll be as clear as i can

because people are going to conflate my

opinion with some opinion that's not

mine and suddenly i'm in trouble

it goes like this

i want to be very clear

that if somebody has a you know organic

serious mental disorder

that they're not going to fix that by

you know getting more sleep and

improving their nutrition probably

as far as i know that doesn't work

so we're not talking people who've got

the real serious you better see a

medical professional right away kind of

problem i'm talking about the people who

maybe think they ought to need to see a

professional but they're not quite there

and and maybe it's not a

organic problem maybe it's

situational

that's a lot of people

there's a lot of people so i'm not not

talking about the deep depression stuff

where you know you really need some help

i'm talking about the people who just

couldn't get through the pandemic

without some mental damage

and can't get through modern life

and managing their smartphones and their

social lives and everything

without

actual mental damage

why can't we teach kids the basics

of good mental health

let me ask you this how many

just in the comments let me know how

many of you have

kids let's say between

10 and

17.

how many of you in the comments because

i i don't know if this crowd has a lot

of kids oh they do

a lot of kids i'm seeing lots of yeses

and the answers especially on locals

so a lot of you have kids in that 10 to

17 range so so you know exactly

what i'm talking about here

how many of those those kids between 10

and 17

have wildly different sleep schedules on

the weekend

than they do during the school week

in the comments how many of your kids

have wildly different sleep patterns on

the weekend

than the weekdays

um i'm seeing i'm actually seeing more

no's than i thought

interesting

i think that suggests maybe a more

conservative audience here

but yeah it looks like most of you are

saying yes to that

now are the children being taught in

school

that having those wildly different sleep

patterns guarantee that they'll be

depressed

guarantee it

it's not even it's not even

statistically oh you're you've increased

the chance that you're going to be

depressed and sleepy and unhappy and

have mental problems i'm not talking

about

increasing the odds

i'm talking about you got it

you you you messed up your sleeping

pattern

and now

you have some mental problems one-to-one

correlation now ideally they're

temporary right

they're more the kind that you could fix

with lifestyle and then some work

what about nutrition

do you think that kids are completely

unaffected

mentally

by

a bad diet

of course they are

of course they are and again

i'm not even sure that you'd say that's

a statistical thing

as much as a one-to-one thing right it's

not statistically true that if you

overeat you get

you get fat

it's true for every person who does it

right every individual if they eat twice

as much as the caloric

recommended intake they'll get fat

so

why are we not teaching kids if you do

the things on this checklist

you're going to feel exactly the way

you're feeling right now

do the things on the checklist

you know have have sleep that's wildly

different on the weekends eat junk food

and i could fill out the rest of the

list

but here's the checklist it's just a

checklist it is that simple

did you do these things

no no you didn't do the things on this

list that everybody has to do

to feel good you didn't do them

nobody can feel good unless they do

what's on the list and all of it really

all of it

you can't eat wrong and then try to get

the other stuff right it works

probably won't work

right you can't get no exercise

and think well i did everything else

right

nope

nope that's not going to work

you have to do all of those things

because we're not so naturally happy

that you've got any like

slop

in the system you kind of have to get

everything right

at least in 2021 i don't know if it's

always been the same

but we should have a class where we

teach them if you do these things you're

going to feel this way if you do this

set of things you'll feel

a different way

at least know that you're choosing it

because my observation is the kids don't

have any connection

in their minds they don't connect

the things they do with their bodies and

their minds

with how they feel

not really i mean they know that they

feel better when they hang out with

their friends

and they know that if they're hungry

it's better to eat

but that's about it

they're not connecting their mood

their entire mental

framework

to the things they do

it just feels like they're disconnected

things

so we should teach them to connect those

things

well there's a publication and i use

that term loosely

called the verge

here's a headline from the verge

headline on twitter anyway it says

netflix suspends trans employee

who tweeted about dave chappelle special

so netflix suspended a trans employee

who i guess complained and tweeted about

the dave chappelle special which was on

netflix

that sounds terrible

doesn't it it sounds as if

netflix suspended somebody for having an

opinion

well i mean that's not unusual for a

company to

fire a disgruntled employee who's

complaining in public

but

given the issue you know it's an issue

of you know general societal interest

seems inappropriate doesn't it

except

it didn't

happen here's what did happen

it is true that netflix suspended that

employee

it is true

that that employee also tweeted about

dave chappelle special

those are two true things

except one didn't cause the other

according to netflix

what did cause it i think was the way

she did it maybe she i know she did

something like attended a meeting she

wasn't supposed to be at or something so

it wasn't her opinion

it was the way she managed her you know

interactions

right

so

when the verge reports this they make it

seem as though these two things are

connected

when in fact they're just two facts

they're not connected they're indirectly

connected because i'm sure her whatever

her behavior wasn't gotten fired

probably sprung from that but it wasn't

because the opinion

they i and i actually think that netflix

does genu this you know who knows i

can't read their minds but i think

netflix probably

genuinely appreciates hearing from their

employees on the stuff like this that

matters why wouldn't they

why wouldn't they right i mean if you're

a big company you do

you do want to feel out what the

employees are thinking especially the

stuff that they're really hot about

of course you want to know that so of

course netflix wanted to know what his

employees were thinking about of course

and do they mind that the employees

are making a statement

against discrimination against the trans

community

probably not i don't think netflix cares

let me say it more positively i'm sure

netflix management

would support

people speaking out in favor of treating

everybody well

now it's a difference of opinion

about whether chappelle was treating

people well or not

but nobody's

disagreeing with the concept at least in

netflix i don't imagine

nobody's disagreeing that you know you

shouldn't be unkind to people for no

reason

so um for the verge i'd like to offer a

headline of my own

it goes like this

two things that are true

uh all of the staff of the verge

and i'm and i'm pretty sure this is true

maybe not a hundred percent

but close to a hundred percent

a hundred percent of the staff of the

verge

masturbated after the holocaust

that's true

that is completely true now not 100

but almost every member of the verge

masturbated after the holocaust

i don't think we can feel good about

that

can we

now i'm not saying because of

not because of

it was just after

they're just two facts that happened

i'm just reporting two facts

you deal you do what you want with the

facts if you're connecting them in your

mind well that's on you

i'm just telling you that the entire

staff of the verge masturbated after the

holocaust

i don't know how you feel good about

that

um

david

leonard

which is a cool name because it's i

assume that's

based on lion heart

at some point in history but david

leonhart who's a senior writer at the

new york times and therefore we should

all listen to him

he did a tweet thread in which he's

showing

he's making the point that science

doesn't know why the coveted cases

suddenly dropped

they also don't know

why they spiked

and they won't know why they dropped

next time and they won't know why they

spiked next time

now of course the delta

variant

is part of the story but

even if you factor in all the things we

do know

according to a senior writer at the new

york times who i agree with and

therefore he must be right

using my confirmation bias i agree with

him so therefore this must be true news

um

so basically he's making the case that

we don't know why it plunges up and we

don't know why it plunges down do you

believe that

how many of you accept the the beginning

premise

how many of you accept the premise

that the experts don't really know why

things are going up and down the way

they're going up and down

everybody on board with that

yeah so anybody who says it's because of

masks it's because of mandates it's

because of vaccinations

those are all variables

we don't know what weight to put in all

the variables exactly

but we don't know why anything's going

up and down

now if you agree with that

here's the next part

you should agree with

logically

that the

two people who got the nobel prize for

economics

didn't deserve it

and i do

and i'm not kidding

who was the person who told you often

and publicly and i think the only one

and

fact check me on both of these claims

number one claim i'm the only one to say

this

and i said it early and publicly

that we'd never know

how much impact

leadership

had on different countries outcomes

because it would be too complicated

who else said that

name one other person who told you at

the beginning of the pandemic

that at the end we wouldn't know who did

a good job

nobody else

i'm the only one who told you that

pretty sure

and it's completely opposite

of what the uh

of what the guys who just won the nobel

prize in economics would have told you

they would have told you because this is

what they won their prize for

that you just take two areas that are

largely the same

you say oh this one had this policy and

this one had this one and then because

the areas are largely the same you could

observe the differences

and then you'd know something

and i told you exactly the opposite

i told you that in complex systems

there's no way you can compare them

because you're just guessing that the

other stuff doesn't matter

and guessing's the opposite of science

it's the opposite

it's literally you could not be more

opposite of science of just sitting

there and guessing

well i'm looking at norway and i'm

sweden and i'm gonna guess

that there are no variables

except the ones that

i've decided are important i'm just

going to guess

because you know i don't know of any

so i just guess there aren't any

that's not a real control group

that is somebody guessing

and then laundering their gas

with science

that's right

the guys who won the nobel prize in

economics

are teaching you how to launder fake

news through science

and they got a nobel prize for it that

prize should be mine damn it

no i don't really mean that

except it's true

i don't mean it but it does it also has

the benefit of being 100 true as far as

i know

all right um

i tweeted and got just a huge reaction

to this tweet i said dear government

what level of virus risk do we need to

reach before ending all mandates and

restrictions

if you don't have a target

don't expect compliance

don't expect compliance if you don't

have a target

what do you think

a lot of people retweeted this so it

looked popular

but i would say this is basic

leadership

it's the most basic leadership i'm going

to ask you to do this really hard thing

and the reason we're going to ask you to

do it

is to achieve this goal

win a war

for example

stop climate change

from you know getting above a certain

level for example

pretty specific if somebody asks you for

a sacrifice

and they say i need you to get this out

do the sacrifice because we're trying to

achieve this specific thing

you can say to yourself yes or no

i would like to help you achieve that

specific thing

but if your so-called leaders

say i would like you to make this big

sacrifice

and you say great until when

and what target are we going for and

they say

we'll let you know

we'll get back to you on that we'll see

how it works out

it's flexible it's fluid

you know situation is fluid

we don't know will there be another

variant don't want to make any promises

because it might be another variant

don't know

right so we don't want to make any

promises

because we don't know what the future

looks like but we'd like to make this

big sacrifice

to get to this future that we can't see

nope

not acceptable

not even a little bit acceptable

you need to tell us what you're shooting

for

now will i forgive you

if you have to change later and modify

it and say oh damn we thought we could

get to this but now we're a little

smarter we learn something we have to

modify the goal okay

okay

that would be just normal

how many projects in your big

corporation

end up exactly the way you planned them

none none

but every corporation tells you you

better have a you better have an

endpoint

i'm not gonna i'm not gonna give you a

bunch of money unless you show me a

business plan with a specific target of

how much money or roi you're gonna shoot

for

right there's no leadership in any

country in any company

that lacks an endpoint that's described

pretty specifically

but also everybody knows you're not

going to hit it

you need it

even if you know you're not going to hit

it because it gives you

a direction

now the government would like you to be

happy with well we're going to save as

many lives as we can

no

no

try that in your corporation

oh we don't need a business plan we're

just going to make as much money as we

can

we want to be flexible don't want to

lock ourselves into a specific thing we

just want to make as much money as we

can that's our plan

that's not really a plan

right

so

um

don't expect

massive compliance with no target

now if we made a target what are the

likelihood that we'd have to revise it

later i think it's a hundred percent

but has nothing to do with

whether or not you should have one

right because that you always miss your

target

if you're a corporation or anything else

you just need them

so john gruden coach of the raiders

resigned some

emails from his past were made

public and they uh had things which

people are calling misogynistic and

anti-anti-gay and

a little bit racist they thought

now

here's my

take on that

i do not

defend

or condone

anything that john gruden said privately

likewise i do not defend or condone

anything that any of you

have ever said

privately

i don't condone it but i also don't

condemn it

anything you say privately with the

expectation that it would remain private

is okay with me

it's okay with me what if it's really

really offensive

okay with me what if it's really really

insulting to me

like just really racist and sexist and

totally insulting about me specifically

in your private communications

okay with me

100

i want you to be able to say anything

you want

privately

if you say it in public then we have

something to talk about

but privately no you can say anything

you want about me it could be the

darkest most insulting

deeply offensive thing you that

anybody's ever said about anybody

i'm cool with that

just don't tell me about it and you know

ideally don't tell other people that

might tell me about it

right you know now i get that sometimes

things get out that you thought would be

private but i'm not going to blame you

for that if you had an expectation of

privacy

you know who i'm going to blame

i'm going to blame the mofo who told me

that's the author of the message

the author of the message is not the

person who sent it first privately

because the expectation of privacy was

there but the the mofo

the a-hole

the mega turd

who told me about it

that's who created the damage

the person who creates the damage

is the mega turd who tells you about it

period that's got to be the standard

we can't let ourselves have a standard

where people's private communications

affect their job

or their standing in society

no

that that's a hard no

so

um

i

i see why the raiders had to do what

they do because you know they they have

to respond to

the fact that their you know customers

will

um

you know they're gonna

the customers are gonna have

you know some reaction and they don't

want to lose their customers et cetera

so i think big companies sometimes just

have to

do things that aren't fair to employees

because it's good for the you know to an

individual employee because the

stockholders or the bigger picture

requires it i guess

so

i don't love what the raiders did

but i understand it

right i'm not sure i would have gone the

same way if i'd been in charge of the

raiders maybe i would have

tried to take a stand but i don't i

don't blame them you know companies got

to take care of themselves that's what

they're designed to take care of

themselves and you wouldn't want to

change that

so here's the

here's the standard i say number one

private communication should stay

private or

if your private communications are not

going to stay private

the who leaks them

is the author

the who leaks them has to take

responsibility for all of the racism

misogyny

everything else

now

if you look at the actual content of the

messages

did did they

look racist to me

nope

nope

they did look exactly like the things

you should never say in public

let me give you one of them one of them

one was

that i guess

john gruden in an email said something

about a black

player's the size of his lips

and that was considered racist

do you know when that would be racist

for sure

as if he said it in public

i would call that racist

because you would be saying something

that you know would be offensive to you

know an entire ethnicity plus anybody

who has you know any sense of decency

but not privately

not privately when you change the

context to privately it's just an

observation

there's nothing in this story that

suggests he has a bad feeling about

black people because one of them

has a feature

which is notable

i just don't see it

but now do you see the point

that that exact thing he said privately

doesn't have a trace of

of racism in it

but if he had ever said that in any

mixed crowd or in public yeah a very

racist

very bad move

let me give you another one

he used the word queer

when referring to a gay person who is

going to be drafted i guess

drafted

does the word queer

suggest that he doesn't like or doesn't

respect gay people

maybe i don't know

i mean you could certainly interpret it

that way if he had used that word in

public

what would i say about him

i'd say he's very

apparently very

anti-lgbtq or at least anti-gay

and he needs to he needs to you know

have some consequences

i mean that would seem pretty racist or

i'm sorry it would seem pretty anti-gay

to me

now i know what you're thinking you're

saying that the gay community uses that

word themselves exactly

that's why

when he used it privately

it didn't look the same to me

privately people use words that are

offensive just because they're more

interesting

have you ever used an offensive word

with somebody who's a friend

just this more interesting word that's

it no real intent behind it it's just a

more interesting word

this is more fun

it's more provocative

right

so um

again i don't condone anything that john

gruden said because i don't want to be

you know tarred with any of that

but i'll say that as a consumer

of this information i looked at the

things that were noted and i did not see

the things he was accused of

but had he said any of that in public of

course it would look awful

all right

um

i saw an article in the new york times

i guess it was written a while ago

about uh

microsteps and micro micro goals

and they mentioned the uh

they were influenced by the book atomic

habits by james clear

and

um the idea is that you

that you if you want to get something

done getting started is the important

part

and that if you can get any kind of

momentum

toward your goal

um

that it's self-reinforcing you get a

little dope being hit for making any

progress

so the atomic habits a big part of it

was just do something

a small little thing get a phone number

you know make yourself a note just

whatever's the smallest thing you can do

toward your goal

and eventually it'll get a little

momentum going and it'll it'll be

self-fulfilling after a point

very good advice now that was in the

atomic habits in 2018.

now um

james clear

has always from the beginning

credited the micro steps idea

as part of the systems versus goal idea

from my book had failed almost

everything and still went big it came

out five years earlier

now i think it was very smart

of

james clear to

pick that you know pick that part of um

part of what was in my book and amplify

it

because you know i just

sort of mentioned it

and described it a little bit but it did

deserve its own book and i and i think

that

let me say as clearly as possible

there aren't that many new ideas

yeah almost any time somebody has an

idea that's like this you know this

game-changing idea and they make a book

and it's popular you can almost always

find out who who influenced that person

right there's always something before it

same with music

seems like all musicians were influenced

by somebody else

but

as i often say an idea is worthless

the value of an idea

is zero

ideas don't have any value so if you say

hey this was your idea and then you know

james clear took that idea and made a

great book out of it

well

you know maybe in some sense he was

influenced by it but

the value in the book is how he

expressed it

the value is the packaging the design

the communication

so i mean that's all that's where the

value comes from so likewise even when i

have something that looks like a new

idea

probably isn't

but the value is i communicated it to

you that's where the value is

but

i i'm starting to think

that this one thing might be one of the

most important things that

i've ever done

because to the extent that it's

influenced other people

who then influence other people

this is a really good technique you know

the micro step idea especially in a

world where everything's um complicated

and we're busy

it's that complication and busyness

that stuns us into inaction because

there are too many things you could do

and there are too many things you could

do instead

so finding some way to beat the

complexity of modern life and finding a

way to take that first step

did maybe it wasn't always important

but right now it's critical so it could

turn out to be one of the most important

things i've ever done

or the most important thing

and

you know it was one chapter of one book

uh let's do the uh

the fake news test on an axio story

well it's it's a national story but i'm

going to use axios as my example now if

you don't know

i created a first draft and this is just

a prototype so we'll be testing we'll be

testing the filter as well as the story

right if the filter says the story's

fake

it could be the the filter is

the problem not the story so keep in

mind that this is all experimental at

this point but we'll see what happens

so i did a google sheets which i tweeted

the link to

and you can so you can all go look at it

in which uh i've just got a column of

sort of a checklist

of what to look for to decide if

something is fake news

and let me first run through it because

i've added to it since the last time i

told you about it

okay

so these are it's a growing list of the

checklist of things to ask

i'll just do them quickly because

they're self-explanatory so if you see a

new story say ask yourself these

questions is the source anonymous

is it a disgruntled employee or

ex-employee is it only being reported on

cnn but not fox or vice versa

is it too on the nose it's like too

exactly the narrative

you know what i mean

is it

is it confusing correlation with

causation

is is still the fog of war phase of the

story where where we don't know all the

facts

is it too man bites dog meaning it's

just too unbelievable to really really

be true

is it only covered by the lesser known

news sites

does the journalists have a grudge

against the subject

are you still waiting to hear the other

side of the story

in other words is there somebody who's

accused of something

and they haven't told you what their

side is yet

does the story give you a percentage

without the raw number

that's another one i added

does it report a percentage but it

doesn't tell you any raw numbers that's

a flag

and vice versa does it give you

raw numbers without putting them in

context of what percentage of something

that is

um

let's see does the story have

uh sources that have ties to some

industry

is a story uh from a serial debunker

who's selling a book

here's a new one i added

is the source of the claim

a serial debunker somebody who keeps

debunking things

and writing books about it i don't trust

the serial debunkers

because once they become the debunking

person

they have to keep debunking

because that's who they are

they become the debunking person that's

how they make the money

so be careful of the serial debunkers

not so much somebody who only once is

debunking something

is the story source politically active

you can't trust them and is the primary

evidence

and is the primary evidence of video

so here's one i added that's just

mind-blowing

one of the checklists to see if it's

fake news

is if there's a video so you can see it

with your own eyes

in 2021

if there's a video

and you can see it with your own eyes

it's probably fake news

you would have thought the opposite but

in 2021 if you just look at all the

examples

you can see time after time it's just a

video edit they leave out a qualifier or

they leave out some context so if the

primary evidence is a video

there's a good chance it's not true

which is weird

right all right so that's the filter

um let's run this story through it and

here's the claim the claim is that

southwest airline pilots

are intentionally

um

intentionally basically calling in

personal days or sick days i don't know

which one

definitely some personal days but i

don't know if there's sick days too or

they're not or they're not accepting

flights et cetera so they're basically

responding to the vaccine mandate

so it's basically a work slow down

if you will

because they're so many of them don't

want to get the force to vaccination to

continue working

now

here's what southwest says

there's no

pilot action happening

no

this is weather

it's weather

duh

we just got a weather problem it'll take

care of itself we'll be fine next week

one of those things isn't true

one of those isn't true but let's take

the claim that the pilots are

doing this intentionally okay and we'll

run it through the fake news filter

all right so here's the claim

is the source

anonymous

kind of yes

but kinda now

who exactly is your source

who told you that the pilots are

organizing this

well i've seen reports about individual

pilots saying yeah this is happening

but they seem to be speculating

they didn't seem to say the the ones i

saw maybe you saw something different i

didn't see anywhere the pilot said yes

i'm calling around i'm organizing people

we're definitely doing this

have you seen that

i haven't seen it

i've seen

unknown sources and

something close to anonymous

so i'm asking you so somebody says they

saw that last night on tucker

one on tucker didn't seem to be guessing

okay

so

i'm going to take that as a fact

that there's somebody who is not an

anonymous source okay

or same page so far

that it did not it's not an anonymous

source

okay

uh is the source a disgruntled current

or ex-employee

disgruntled employee

disgruntled employee is a big flag

so there's one

uh i'd watch out for that one

disgruntled employee

is it only being reported as a fact on

one of the networks or neither is cnn

and fox news are they both reporting

that the pilots are doing an action

that the pilots are intentionally doing

that anybody does anybody know that

is cnn saying that the pilots are doing

this intentionally and also fox news

cnn is reporting the weather angle

can can i get a confirmation on that

because i'm only hearing it in a comment

can i get anybody else

who watches enough cnn

uh

it looks like cnn's not reporting it is

a pilot thing

all right you need a time filter

maybe

all right interesting

so we don't know axios is reporting it

all right

so i'm going to put a question on that

one but we'll circle back to that one um

is it too on the nose

is it is it too like right

on yeah it kind of is isn't it

isn't the story kind of perfect

the airline pilots are often military

people

and they're ex-military people

and they're

fighting another you know freedom

thing for the united states

it's not complicated though it's sort of

straightforward hey we don't like this

so we're protesting so i'm not going to

say it's too on the nose because it's

too ordinary like it would be easy to be

on the nose in such a simple situation

is the correlation being treated as

causation hmm

i don't think so

does it look like there's a correlation

versus causation problem i don't see

that are we still in the fog of war

phase

are we in the fog of war where you're

not quite sure what's going on

yes we are

yes we are still in the i'm not so sure

what's going on here phase which

is a big flag for fake news

all right um

is it two man by his dog now is it only

covered by lesser known news sites no

does a journalist have a grudge no are

you still waiting to hear the other side

of the story no

does the story give percentages without

raw numbers

does it

what percentage of the

pilots are protesting

do you know

that would be the biggest part of the

story right

what percentage

of the pilots

yeah we have percentages of flights

somebody said

six thousand out of 140 000. does it

look as though the percentage is being

left out of the story or under

underreported

um

yeah

so

so i do think there might be a little

bit of playing with the raw numbers

versus percentages the stories i saw

didn't seem to do a good job of sorting

this out

um is the story source of serial

debunker no is this is a politically

active people now

is the primary evidence of video no

so

we do have several flags

there are some flags that would suggest

this is fake news

doesn't mean it is

because remember this is just giving you

an indication you can't prove anything

with this

but

how could it be the southwest which does

not have a reputation as a big lying

company right

correct me if i'm wrong southwest

actually has a pretty good reputation

one of the best right isn't it isn't it

often one of the best places to work

voted near the top all the time

so do you just

i i think it's fair to distrust

corporations

but wouldn't you say southwest is a

little bit more on the reliable

you know non-lying side of the equation

wouldn't you say

i feel yes

right which doesn't mean they're not

lying in this case

but i think reputationally

they're pretty solid company

so how could it be true

uh simultaneously

that southwest is telling the truth that

it's not a pilot action while the pilots

are saying oh it's a pilot action

trust me i'm a pilot and this is a pilot

action how could both be true

well

let me tell you

what if

nobody has said to southwest management

we're doing this thing what would

southwest say

if every time they talk to a pilot hey

are you doing this because of the

vaccine mandate

and the pilot looked at them and said

vaccine mandate

no i'm just

i'm just taking my personal days that

you've allocated

and then the southwest says oh

well we heard people are doing this

because of the mandate

and the pilot looks at them and say yeah

i've heard that too

i think i'll take my personal days

see where i'm going

i think they're both true

i think that from southwest's point of

view

they have not been informed there's an

employee action

so from their point of view there isn't

now

furthermore they said it's weather

could it be true

that the problem is weather

but also true

that the problem is the the pilots

yes

it can be both

here's how

suppose there are enough pilots doing

the personal days

that it puts a strain on the system

but not a strain that they couldn't

normally handle

except

the weather was bad too

it could be that they had two problems

either one of them they could handle

because they've got enough flexibility

so let's say you've got some bad weather

in one place but you need to move some

pilots around to adjust for the bad

weather

you could do it

but now they didn't have the flexibility

because so many people took personal

days

do you think that when each pilot went

to their supervisor and said i'd like to

take a personal day

did all the supervisors immediately

coordinate with all the other

supervisors to find out if too many

people were asking for personal days at

the same time

probably not

right

so don't you think that if if management

asks the supervisors what's going on

they say

not much few people ask for personal

days but that's not that unusual

you know wanted to get it in before

christmas

i i feel as though southwest is maybe

giving us a little bit of a weasel

answer and that they would certainly be

aware that the pilots

may be acting in a way that is reducing

the number that are available

but not so overtly

that they're saying we're doing this and

on top of that the bad weather may have

taken that little bit of you know little

extra cushion they had and removed it

so could you say the weather is the

problem

because if the weather had not happened

they would still have enough cushion to

get things done

yeah see it's like it's not so clear is

it so i'm not so sure that the the

filter works in this case because it's

just a murky situation

um but i would say there's at least a

possibility that both stories are

completely true there is a pilot action

and from southwest point of view

the weather was the problem because they

could have handled the pilot action okay

without the weather problem

see what i mean it's sort of like saying

cove had killed you

the cove had killed you because you've

done everything wrong in your life up to

that point

you over ate you didn't exercise

right so you've done everything wrong

and then the last thing that happens is

the covet well likewise it's entirely

possible that the last thing that

happened

was the bad weather

but they would have been able to handle

it should you know if all the other bad

things like the pilot actions hadn't

happened anyway that's just speculation

uh biden is failing on getting us

rapid tests

i don't know if trump would have done

better

but this is a clear case of biden

failing

i mean i think even his

friends would say he's not getting it

done on the testing

so

that's a gigantic failure for the biden

administration

gigantic

now would trump have done better i don't

know

i don't know

but we'll never know

uh ben and jerry's

was defending why it's i don't know

boycotting someplace

um was it israel

or someplace

and was asked why don't you stop selling

your ice cream in texas because they've

got that abortion law and you don't like

that

and i don't know if it was ben or jerry

got really shall we say befuddled

because they couldn't answer how they

can continue to stay in business selling

any ice cream at all when everywhere you

sell the ice cream

everywhere you sell the ice cream

there's somebody doing something you

don't like

and uh i saw somebody make a comment on

twitter that looked like an episode of

curb your enthusiasm and boy did it

once you hear that comment it didn't

look like an episode of curb your

enthusiasm

the ap is fact checking this claim see

if you heard this fake news

there's an anti-vaccine website

a study on a vietnam

and it says that vaccinated people carry

more virus than unvaccinated have you

ever heard that

have you ever heard that unvaccinated

people

carry more i'm sorry have you ever heard

that vaccinated people

if they do get infected would carry more

of the virus than an unvaccinated person

has anybody heard that that

because it's not true

somebody says obviously

yeah so that's fake news here's and

here's what the study actually said

that compared to the original virus

the ones that people are getting these

days is the delta variant

and that's far more far more infection

in especially your mouth and nose i

think

how satisfied is scott adams with where

we are and now of course not i ask

because i have considered us to have

mostly returned enormously oh

well

um i can't travel

i mean

right i can't travel that's not too

normal

um it looks like our

supply chain

is pretty effed up i don't know how

quickly we'll fix that

um and i still wear a mask at the

grocery store where i live

so

anyway so the point is that

while it is technically true

that people who are getting the virus

lately

even if they're vaccinated the

vaccinated people have tons of virus

compared to the

last

variant

but the comparison is the old version to

the variant that's the only thing being

compared

the delta variant gives you more virus

it wouldn't matter if you were

vaccinated or unvaccinated the delta

variant gives you more varia more virus

so it seems as though

people are vaccinated and they get the

breakthrough case it seems like they

have more virus than the old days but

that's because the delta variant it's

not because of anything about the

vaccination all right so it's fake news

and speaking of fake news

i'm gonna have to go that is all for

today i am late and i think today was a

tremendous

live stream i hope you liked it too and

i will talk to you

tomorrow