Episode 1724 Scott Adams - Elon Musk Might Buy Twitter Today. And More
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: ----------- 35% support illegal immigration - Elon Musk might buy Twitter today - California Governor candidate, Michael Shellenberger - Governor DeSantis vs Disney - Viewer Q&A ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Is it my imagination or did it used to be that if you were talking about a bride and a groom, they both sounded like good words? Bride sounds like a good word. I'm not even going to say that other word now. But if you'd like to take today's experience up to the h…
View segment →ll take it all. You don't leave money on the table. No, you don't. So to take this to the ultimate experience, all you need is, well, a copper mug or a glass or a tankard. Hell, this time you can't eat your flask. A vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. Barbara made…
View segment →t you expect nearly 45 minutes of quality entertainment. And I was just talking to the Locals platform before I signed on to YouTube, and I said, hmm, challenge to see if I could come up with a story that would be useful. You know, you would actually get something from it and it would fill in the ti…
View segment →l. There you go. Now let's talk about immigration. Rasmussen had a little poll, and 35 percent of people they polled—adult, you know, likely voter types—support the trend of rising illegal immigration. So 35 percent of the people who vote or likely to vote, more than a third, are in favor of increa…
View segment →he's raised the money and it looks like they could make a deal. Twitter and Elon Musk today. So there might actually be an announcement today that Elon Musk is buying Twitter and it's going through. Now I'm a little skeptical. It seems a little too easy. Were any of you expecting it to be this easy…
View segment →Well, a grapefruit doesn't get a good deal, so why does Disney? It wouldn't make any sense. Just because they're a corporation and something else is a corporation, that doesn't mean they should be compared for everything. Here's the comparison you should make. How many gigantic corporations who cou…
View segment →cently but I don't think they were actually—they were either inert or something. So I don't have any recent experience with it. My first experience I thought changed me forever. So I don't know what's going on. I don't know why once it was a profound life-changing experience and the second time it w…
View segment →e would be tall and good-looking and have great hair. Yeah, you. Those things shouldn't matter, right? It shouldn't matter that you're tall and good-looking, you have great hair. But it does. It does. Sorry, it does. Probably one of the best communicators that I've ever seen as a politician. He's go…
View segment →what you just said starting with the word "so," so you're saying that all lizards can fly, whatever comes after that word "so" will definitely not be what you're saying. And it's a sign that the person, their own argument has fallen apart. So when somebody responds with a "so," you've already won. Y…
View segment →. All I had was a really bad stomach ache that lasted 24 hours. Could be just stale. Yeah, maybe. Who knows. So I don't think—I think that there was something else going on. And two people had the same experience at the same time, so I doubt that both had exactly the same unusual experience. So any…
View segment →looks like DeSantis is probably going to win. So that's how the system works. All right. What percent of parents are completely useless? Good question. I will put that to the audience. What percentage of parents would you say are above the line of capable? Wherever above the line of capable. All ri…
View segment →, plus genetics. If you take the kid's genetic propensities, their peer pressure, and just the stuff that they're observing on TV and everywhere else, that's 90 percent of their socialization. And the parents might be 10 percent about pick up, you know, clean your room and show up on time. That's ab…
View segment →A woman can flirt. I'm going to give you my impression which will be horrifying. This is going to be horrifying. My impression of a woman flirting with maximum, like just full force. This is full-on flirting. "Hi." That's it. Done. Direct eye contact and a smile. You're done. Almost every guy will t…
View segment →ut with somebody who had plenty of empathy but no power because you're probably going to end up helping them. Right now you might like those people but in terms of a leader you want somebody who has ability you don't have but also cares about you. Now that goes to flirting, especially male flirting.…
View segment →ll you that a compliment, if it's given sincerely and confidently, can act like a flirt while being just matter of fact. So if you do it right people will accept the compliment as intended. It'll have a big impact. But you don't have to have a let's say a begging simp-like approach to doing it. You…
View segment →Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Is it my imagination or did it used to be that if you were talking about a bride and a groom, they both sounded like good words? Bride sounds like a good word. I'm not even going to say that other word now.
But if you'd like to take today's experience up to the highest level of excellence, and why would you settle for less? Look at you. Come on, just look at you. Look at you. Look at you. Yeah, you don't settle. You're the kind of person who will take it all. You don't leave money on the table. No, you don't.
So to take this to the ultimate experience, all you need is, well, a copper mug or a glass or a tankard. Hell, this time you can't eat your flask. A vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. Barbara made it. Everybody, Barbara finally made it for the simultaneous sip.
Barbara, this one's for you. It's the dopamine hit of the day. It's the thing that makes everything better, especially Barbara's day. It's called the simultaneous sip. Barbara, do you have witnesses? Because I'm talking to you directly. You didn't see this coming, did you? Is it freaking you out, Barbara?
It's about us now. It's just me and you, Barbara. Get ready. Are the people around you watching this? Because if this is happening to you alone, it's gonna be awful. It's gonna be terrible because you're gonna be like, is anybody seeing this? My iPad is talking directly to you. To me. That's right, Barbara. I'm talking directly to you.
Get ready for the simultaneous sip. The rest of you can join in too with Barbara. Go.
And that, ladies and gentlemen... yes, I'm sorry, I just read a funny comment on the Locals platform.
Now let me tell you a little story. And here's why. Today I looked at the news to prepare for my award-winning—well, not yet, but I think it had award-winning—livestream. And I said to myself, well, it's sort of a thin news day. But yet you expect nearly 45 minutes of quality entertainment. And I was just talking to the Locals platform before I signed on to YouTube, and I said, hmm, challenge to see if I could come up with a story that would be useful. You know, you would actually get something from it and it would fill in the time. Because with less than 15 seconds to go, I didn't have enough content to go more than 10 minutes.
But why is it that I wasn't worried whatsoever? Well, how many times have I told you I took the Dale Carnegie course? It was just the most awesome thing. One of the many things you learn is to be prepared to give a speech at any time. Isn't that weird? That's such a specific skill, isn't it? You should be prepared to give a speech anytime. Just somebody might say, "Scott, could you stand up and give us a few words?" And you'd be like, look. So you should be prepared.
Now let me tell you a story where this mattered. A number of years ago I was doing a book tour where you go around the country to various big bookstores and you sign a lot of copies of your book. And one of the big stores I went to was in Denver. I think it was not just a bookstore, it was almost like a complex. It was like a major bookstore plus operation. And so you usually have a handler, and your handler goes with you and takes you to the various places you have to visit for interviews and whatever.
And the handler and I walk in, and the manager of the bookstore greets us, is all excited that I'm there, and says, "Oh, we're so happy that you're here. People have been waiting for your speech for over an hour." And I said, "My what?" They said, "Your talk. People are really excited about your talk." And I said, "My what? My what?" It sounded like you said talk. They said, "Yeah, your talk that you're gonna give. The room is full. It's an overflow capacity. Can't believe how many people showed up." And I said, "The room? The talk? The what?"
I thought I was just there to sign books. And she goes, "Yeah." And she takes me to the room and opens the door, and there's this enormous auditorium full of people who are waiting for my talk that I had no idea I was giving until I showed up.
Now what happened? Well, I took the Dale—I may have mentioned because I took the Dale Carnegie course—I had a speech, and so I just gave it. That was it. And so I'm demonstrating to you what I learned in the Dale Carnegie course. So because I was light on material, I always have like a little bag of stories that have some useful point to them. So my useful point is it is really, really useful to have a little bag of stories. And you might want to have one that's sort of something about your company or one that's like an interesting thing you would tell, you know, if you were asked to be interesting at a party. You just have five stories that you could just whip out in a minute. Very useful. There you go.
Now let's talk about immigration. Rasmussen had a little poll, and 35 percent of people they polled—adult, you know, likely voter types—support the trend of rising illegal immigration. So 35 percent of the people who vote or likely to vote, more than a third, are in favor of increasing illegal activity, specifically immigration. Would you have guessed it was that high?
It's funny that they say illegal immigration. Now if the question had been "Should we increase immigration?" then I could see a third of the people saying yeah, you know, in my opinion we should have more immigration. I could understand somebody having that opinion. I don't really know what the right number of immigrants is. There's some number that's good. There's some number that's too little, too few, because we actually almost certainly need some kind of immigrant flow. But there's some number that's too big. I don't know what that number is anyway.
And so for some reason we all avoid the only thing that matters, which is what would be the right number and right composition, you know, of educated versus laborer types. But anyway, more than a third of the country supports the illegal type of immigration. So I guess they would imagine it should be legal, I suppose would be the interpretation, including 19 percent who strongly support it. They're like really in favor of the illegal kind of immigration. Twelve percent not so sure.
So a majority, 53 percent of Democrats, support the trend of record-setting illegal immigration. But 75 percent of Republicans say no, and 54 percent of voters not affiliated with either party say no, I guess. So I wonder if this is part of the larger trend that conservatives like to be in charge of their family situation and the people that are furthest on the left are more in favor of a "it takes a village, the school can raise your kid" kind of thing. It just seems like more of that. Because if you wanted to protect your family, you could imagine that you might say less immigration because it might have some impact on your family. But if you were like, you know, everybody is a village, then you'd say hey, it doesn't matter who you are, come on in, we'll figure it out collectively. So I guess that makes sense philosophically that they would think that.
But I can't imagine... well, let me give you my overall philosophy of all these things. Whenever there's a question of individual benefit or cost or benefit versus protecting a system, if the system is a really important one, I generally favor the system. Take for example capitalism. I think capitalism works better than the alternatives but has all these problems, pretty bad problems, you know, lots of inequality, blah blah blah. But still, if it came to a choice of making everybody equal or having capitalism with all its flaws, I would support the system because the system is what gets you to the most people getting the most benefit over the longest period of time.
Same with free speech. You come up with lots of examples where you say I don't like that free speech, but still you're better off supporting the system that free speech exists despite all of its horrible flaws according to you. So immigration is the same thing. It feels as if the Democrats are looking at it as sort of a human, individual human suffering kind of situation, which it is. It's 100 percent exactly that. It's about human suffering and human condition.
But if you take the very—and I have respect for the position—if you have the empathy that you can't release yourself from caring about the individuals and saying you know if they can make it to the border, let's just do what we can to help them, that's great empathy. And as a human being I would actually probably quite appreciate you. You're the kind of person I would want as a friend, that you have that much empathy that you really can't see the system beyond the individual suffering. That's a somewhat worthy kind of respectable position. Even if you don't hold it, you'd have to say you can't hate somebody who can't look past individual suffering to see the system.
But I guess I'm a worse person because I can do that. So in my opinion most people would be best off with systems that have integrity. So I'd like to see the immigration system work legally and effectively. And then separately, once you have your immigration completely controlled, then you have a separate conversation about what's the right amount. And you do it logically. You do it in the way that supports the most benefit for the most people, which almost certainly would be America first. In other words, keeping America strong has a ripple effect of protecting the entire continent, right?
Do you think South America is better off because the United States is strong? You don't even need much of a military in South America because who's going to attack South America? Nobody's going to take a run on South America because America is so strong. So it's hard to separate what is good for America and its strength and how that benefits other countries. You know, is Japan better off for having an American defensive umbrella over there? Probably.
All right, breaking news. Maybe it's already happened, but apparently Elon Musk has gotten further than we imagined or some imagined, and he's raised the money and it looks like they could make a deal. Twitter and Elon Musk today. So there might actually be an announcement today that Elon Musk is buying Twitter and it's going through.
Now I'm a little skeptical. It seems a little too easy. Were any of you expecting it to be this easy? And it could be that the threat of lawsuits was big enough that the board just said we're out, which would be pretty rational. Pretty rational.
I should mention that I own some Twitter stock, so I guess it would be good for me if he buys it, although I would have held it longer than that. But yeah, so it isn't my—I suppose as an investor it wasn't exactly my preference. But as an American, I guess I like the benefit to free speech.
Speaking of Elon Musk, it makes me think of Bill Gates. There's a meme that's being fact-checked. So Reuters facts and others are saying it's not true and the photo has been doctored. There's a photo of Bill Gates crossing the street in which he has enormous breasts. Now I'm not talking about his just unflattering photos that you've seen. I'm talking about actually photoshopped gigantic breasts. And Reuters felt the need to fact-check that because there would be some people who imagined he had transitioned and he had enormous breasts. But it's not true. It is not true. He has only average-sized breasts. So if you thought that Bill Gates had enormous breasts, totally untrue. They're larger than average. They're healthy sized.
All right. Speaking of freedom, once Elon Musk buys Twitter and returns free speech to all of us, which I think we would all applaud, I think the first order of business is he should ban Disney from the platform. Because I love free speech, but Disney? Am I right? Let me at those guys. So I do like free speech, but with the exception of stuff I don't like. So I will make an exception.
So I have been convinced by the people on the internet who have made a good argument. Lots of times I don't change my mind. I don't change my mind. But this is one of those cases where when you're faced with a superior argument, I think you have to fold to it. And so the argument I've been presented with the last several days is that yeah, free speech is great unless it's something you really, really don't like. And then it starts interfering with the actual workings of the government. And if your free speech is the kind that actually matters, the kind that would change something, that's extra dangerous.
So the kind of speech that I think free speech should allow is the kind that agrees with all my personal views. But beyond that I'd really like to see stuff banned. So I'm hoping Elon Musk will just start banning the stuff I don't like. Because otherwise I don't think I could support this as a stockholder. I'd have to vote against it. I needed him in there banning. I don't want—because if people start giving their opinions then things will happen I don't like and that would be weak. And I don't want to be weak, so I want to be strong and violate the Constitution for things that I like and things I want.
Okay, some of you can't even tell what I'm kidding. Can you? How many of you don't know that I'm not serious? Raise your hand. Come on, raise your hand.
All right. Well, I am hearing some terrible arguments about the Disney thing. But are you all bored with that? Is everybody done with the Disney story? Because here's what I think happened. I think I would say hey, free speech isn't more important than these things. Then people would say, are you a groomer? And I'd say oh, I don't even think that's the right conversation. And then I'd say hey, free speech is still important. And somebody would say but Disney's deal is better than other corporations. And I'd say I don't even think that's the topic. And that—so I don't know if I ever even had a real conversation about it because you couldn't get anybody to even stick to the topic. It was like, well, what about this other thing?
All right, so there's nothing there for us to talk about, I guess. But let me give you one useful lesson, a micro lesson on analysis. And this is probably the most important thing that economists or people trained in that or people who have business training get right that people who don't have that kind of training get wrong and don't know that is wrong. It's what I call the comparison problem. If you compare the wrong things, you're obviously going to come to a wrong conclusion, right?
So one of the things that I heard the most from—but only from people who don't have good comparison skills—is that Disney was getting a sweetheart deal compared to other corporations. And why should they get the extra deal? That's not the right comparison. If you're comparing Disney to any other corporation, that's completely nonsensical. You might as well compare them to a grapefruit. Well, a grapefruit doesn't get a good deal, so why does Disney? It wouldn't make any sense. Just because they're a corporation and something else is a corporation, that doesn't mean they should be compared for everything.
Here's the comparison you should make. How many gigantic corporations who could credibly go to a state and say we can bring in 60,000 employees and millions of travelers to your state, which you want to be a destination for travel, so our business is right on point with what you want to be? It will bring in gigantic revenue for you. And what we would like in return for the efficiency of building it, primarily just for efficiency so that you and I can get our benefits as soon as possible, how about we have some autonomy? And that autonomy will have a certain length deal in the beginning. This will be really good for us but also really good for you because you're getting all this economic development. So and on and on.
So the correct comparison is this: Disney and what they asked Florida for compared to the other company they asked Florida for the same thing and could offer the same benefit in return. That's the only comparison. If you compared anything else, then you're not well trained in comparing. Because if Florida would have said no to another company that offered something similarly as awesome, well then you'd say okay, well why is Disney getting the special deal? If somebody else made the same offer, shouldn't they get the same consideration? And the answer is yes. Yes they should. That's exactly what they should get. So if two companies had made this offer to Florida, Florida should have accepted both. If three companies made that offer, Florida should have accepted all three.
Have I sold you that? Everybody who said other corporations didn't get this deal, just—they're not right or wrong. It's not a question of right or wrong. It's not even the right comparison. It's like comparing it to a grapefruit. It has no relevance whatsoever.
Okay, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the useful part of our program. We're now to the part where I either have to tell you an interesting story, possibly one that you prompted me for, or we may be ending early, which would be a tragedy for all of us, I think you'd agree. And while you're thinking what you would like me to tell you in terms of a story or possibly if you'd like me to heal anybody from any problems, I will be taking this gratuitous extra sip and watching your comments.
Mushrooms is the question. Am I mad at you? No, I'm not mad at you. More about mushrooms. Well, that does seem to be the issue of the day, doesn't it? But I worry that I've talked about it too much. I'll just give you the basic idea, which is I thought I tried some recently but I don't think they were actually—they were either inert or something. So I don't have any recent experience with it. My first experience I thought changed me forever. So I don't know what's going on. I don't know why once it was a profound life-changing experience and the second time it wasn't. But one possibility is that I'd already changed. I worry about that. I mean, I don't worry about it, but I suppose that would be good. Yeah, why would I want to change again exactly?
Google education. What's that? Shellenberger's chances in the election? Strangely good. Yeah, Michael Shellenberger running as an independent. You know, he's written books on everything from homelessness, how to deal with that, drug addiction, energy policy directly related to California. He's researched forest fire stuff, basically the water problem. Every problem specific to California he's actually become an expert on. And he's an insanely good communicator and persuader. So could he? He actually does have a lane.
I think the difference between me saying he has a really high chance and predicting he actually will win is what the media does. Because he is so media friendly. Like he can appear on media left and right because he's an independent. So he's not locked down to either media. Think about that. Just think about that. Who is the last person who is smart enough to figure out how to stake out a position in which CNN and Fox News would both be equally happy to have you as a guest? Name one other person who has accomplished that. Can you?
Now, Andrew Yang. Okay. Well, Trump for a while and then he even gave up. Arnold, actually. Arnold's pretty good. Arnold is good. All right, so I guess there are a few. But Mark Cuban, but you know he's not as political as he could be. Yeah, Elon Musk, right? But they're not political, remember. So I'm talking about somebody actually running for office who would be just as desired on the left and right.
And here's the reason. What makes news is not just doing something well. That's not news because people are doing things at various levels of quality all the time. It can't all be news. What's news is somebody does something a different way. And that's the thing he's got. And the different way is so obviously superior it's a different way that literally nobody can argue with. Like what would be the argument against him having a deep knowledge and best-selling books on exactly the topic that you're trying to solve? Now you could argue you don't like his solution, but you can't argue against that being a better process. Like having somebody who's really shown by his own production, the work he's produced and the activism—I mean he's been directly on the streets working on fentanyl and stuff.
So if you were to design a perfect candidate, that candidate would be tall and good-looking and have great hair. Yeah, you. Those things shouldn't matter, right? It shouldn't matter that you're tall and good-looking, you have great hair. But it does. It does. Sorry, it does. Probably one of the best communicators that I've ever seen as a politician. He's got that.
So now combine just those two things. If that's all you had, if all you had was the look and you were one of the best communicators anybody had ever seen, you'd probably get elected to stuff, right? But on top of that he already demonstrated by writing several best-selling books a deep knowledge of everything from climate change and energy and nuclear power, homelessness, addiction—literally exactly the issues that the state is dealing with. Nobody's ever put together a talent stack like that.
So if you ever saw a—if anybody writes stories—if this ever happens, if the media ever says what does a perfect politician look like, if you're going to build one, the only thing he doesn't have is an ethnic signature that California might want. You know, he doesn't have the ethnicity or the gender or whatever it takes. Do you think that will be held against him? Probably. Probably. But here's the thing. He's not a Republican. I think it would definitely be held against him if he were a Republican. But remember Gavin Newsom is the most popular candidate in the state, which doesn't seem to make sense, does it? But the reason Gavin Newsom could be a good-looking white guy with good hair and still be popular in California is because he's so pro the things that people want. And Shellenberger has like a better version of that. He is pro what the people want with a demonstrated base of understanding that says he knows how to get it. That's even stronger if he can sell that. And he's probably one of the few people who could because he has those skills.
So if you see a major—here would be the turning point—if you saw a major media piece, let's say Wall Street Journal, New York Times, describing how he's running the process and also maybe some of his policies for those specific things, if you see that it means that the major media is now paying attention. And the way it works is you need at least one major publication to say something is the right frame or is the right story, and then all the others just fall in line. The stories don't make themselves. The stories are made by the big publications and then everybody else says well that's the story. Because there are a million things you could talk about, but the big publications tell you what you will talk about because everybody falls in line, right?
So there's the canary in the coal mine for you. If you see one—if you see something like New York Times, like a real profile that's positive, and or Wall Street Journal or Washington Post, I guess. So if you see any of those three, maybe some of the other media doing a major piece and they talk about how he's doing it instead of a hit piece which you'd normally see or a love letter—I mean if they just don't, if they're just objective about it—then I think he's gonna be... you know, I'm not sure how many of you would have guessed that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be governor of California or Ronald Reagan. You know, we do like entertainers, but we also are willing—we in California are willing to look at anything that looks like a good deal in the end.
You know, I'm not—as much as I and other people say oh it's about your ethnicity because everybody's woke in California or it's about your gender or whatever, even though it largely is, all of that goes away if the candidate is good enough. It just all melts away because that's what Gavin Newsom did. I mean all of that stuff didn't matter to him because he was a good enough candidate. That's all he needed. Schwarzenegger too. Schwarzenegger was a good enough candidate that he just evaporated those other concerns.
So if all newspapers support them we'll all fall in line? No, that's the so tell for cognitive—it's been a while since I mentioned this, so some of you are new. When you see somebody mischaracterize what you just said starting with the word "so," so you're saying that all lizards can fly, whatever comes after that word "so" will definitely not be what you're saying. And it's a sign that the person, their own argument has fallen apart. So when somebody responds with a "so," you've already won. You could actually just walk away. Go, oh, there it is. Victory. There's the "so."
And the first time I ever told you that, you think, what, you can actually tell when you've won an argument by that one word? Really? Really, that one word? You put it in front of a sentence and that's all it takes. You don't even need to know what the rest of the sentence is. Seriously? Yes, yes, seriously. When you start looking for it you'll see it so clearly. Yeah, all of this "so what you're saying is" is a guarantee that you just won the argument. Because here's why. If somebody still had an argument they would have used it. They wouldn't have to mischaracterize what you're saying. They would simply use what you're saying and say well here's why the thing you're saying doesn't make sense. If they had an argument. Otherwise they go, "So what you're saying is that even Hitler would be okay as your roommate. Is that what you said?" No, no, nobody's saying that. No, it's not good for what.
All right, let's see if I can—somebody's saying that my claim that my bad experience with what I thought were mushrooms, for me to say that maybe it wasn't actually active mushrooms, is cognitive dissonance. Possible, but there's no trigger for it. In other words, I could be wrong or I could be right, but cognitive dissonance would require that there was something about my prior opinions that this would violate. And nothing like that happened. So there's nothing that could have changed my mind. There's just some knowledge that I'm lacking, which is what was in it.
Now some have said that the difference between a good trip and a bad trip, if you can call it that, on mushrooms would be how much you like that basically. But in both cases it would be a psychedelic or mildly psychedelic effect. And I didn't have any. So if you take something in the higher dose range and you don't have any effect, I'm not sure you'd call that a bad trip. All I had was a really bad stomach ache that lasted 24 hours. Could be just stale. Yeah, maybe. Who knows.
So I don't think—I think that there was something else going on. And two people had the same experience at the same time, so I doubt that both had exactly the same unusual experience. So anyway, there's not much to say about that because I don't have enough information about what it was that I ingested. It wasn't microdosing. So those of you who think I didn't take enough, I followed the directions. I definitely took it all. But if this doesn't tell you to not do drugs, nothing will.
It's interesting, the variety of experiences people have had. It's really interesting. Yeah, so apparently people have had experiences all over the place. But I suspect it's because I think we're thinking that the difference is in us. And I think that's probably an illusion because there's no quality control for this particular illegal drug. So if there's no quality control, it probably has more to do with the product than some state you're in. So my guess is that you could be in a bad state and it would put you in a good mood if you got the good stuff. And if you were in a bad mood and you got the bad stuff, you'd think it was because your mood. But maybe it was just a bad bag of stuff. Who knows? Who knows?
What do you think of woke corporations? Well, isn't today's wokeness tomorrow's, let's say, on the same side of history? It's hard to look at stuff in the present because all that matters is how we're going to look at it in a year or 10 years. And you know, I try to take myself back and say okay, what would it have been like when corporations were saying we're going to try to make sure we have more diversity? Today that sounds pretty routine, doesn't it? That sounds pretty, well that's just normal. Why wouldn't they? It's good for them, good for the public. Yeah, they should put some effort into that. Let's give us some diversity.
Now if you go too hard on that, you know, you can—it's just discrimination. But there's probably some way to do it that's only a little bit discriminatory but gets you some benefits maybe. So if you look at that, if you looked at it when it was happening, it just looked like, oh, it has gone too far. Because I was in the middle of it when it did happen. I lost two jobs because I was a white male. So when that happened I said to myself, well that's terrible. It's an overreaction. Why are these companies being forced to be so woke? And you know, why can't I just do a good job and get promoted for my abilities? You know, why did my ethnicity have to even be an issue?
So that's what I thought at the time. But because of those and other efforts, corporations are more diverse than they used to be. And so you look at it now with a historical view of it. And even I, who as I said lost two jobs for being a white guy—and I was told that directly by my bosses, by the way, at a large bank and then at the phone company. So I'm not guessing. You know, it's not a conspiracy theory. My boss in both places said, sorry, we won't be able to promote you because you're white and male. I hated it.
But now I look at it, you know, 30 years of distance in the past, and I say to myself, you know, I don't know if that's the only way you could have gotten here. And things do look better in that one sense. Diversity has improved. I don't know. It's hard for me to judge it as harshly as I judged it when it was literally screwing me.
So the first thing you have to do is say what would it look like in a few years. And one possibility is that in 10 years you're gonna say oh yeah, what Disney was fighting for was mischaracterized. Because don't you think both sides are mischaracterized when you look at the Disney thing and DeSantis and the "Don't Say Gay"? Both sides mischaracterize the other one's point, right? That's why it's just a stupid debate. It's really just power. You know, it's people doing what they can because they can, because it feels like power and it gives them a dopamine hit. But basically it's just two liars facing off with each other. It's hard for me to take sides with liars. Sometimes you have to, I know what you're going to say. Sometimes you have to. But I don't like to do it if I could avoid it. Like even if the liar is on my side, I don't really want to side with a liar. Not really.
But it's entirely possible that the only way DeSantis can prevail and the people on their side is to, let's say, exaggerate what's going on. Exaggeration is persuasion. And I'm always in favor of persuasion for a good point. So you know, there's this line where you go from hyperbole to just flat-out lying. And this whole topic is just to me it looks like people lying to each other. So I feel a little bit like the only part I want to talk about is freedom of speech. And that's why people keep getting mad at me because I'm not dealing with the issue. And the reason I'm not is because it's just two sides lying. What am I going to add to that? There's nothing to add to that. Just stay away from it. Run away.
Now but the only thing I would add is that if you think that Disney is trying to hurt your children, what the hell? They're not trying to hurt. I think I can say this with great certainty. Disney's intention is not to hurt children. They have a different opinion of what it looks like to help them, I guess, and help everybody else. It's just a difference of opinion.
Now conservatives consistently say that the family should be in charge of stuff like that. And if you have a—see, here's why I think there's a difference. Conservatives are so strong family-oriented that once you start with the assumption, okay, start with a strong family, and then does it make sense that the family has more decision-making and influence than the school? Yes, it does. If you start with the assumption of a strong family, then other assumptions follow from that.
But if you're, let's say, on the left and you don't have an assumption that strong families are necessary or even needed, then it doesn't make sense that families have the power. Because if you're a weak family structure, there's sort of nobody to make the right decision, no way to make it stick. You might as well let the school do it.
Now, second question is if the school's going to do it, whatever it is, how do they do it right as opposed to making things worse? So here's where I think you need to just understand the decision. If you think there's a right and a wrong decision on this—families deciding versus the schools deciding what to tell kids—there's no right or wrong. There's only what's right for some types of families.
If you have a strong family structure and two capable parents, then it's absolutely better for the family to inform the kids. Would everybody agree with that statement so far? So far, if you have a capable parental structure, they should have the maximum amount of control over the children. That's the best outcome because they're really capable. By definition that's the setup.
But now let me change it. Let's say you've got one parent, doesn't matter the gender. You've got one parent. It wasn't anybody's fault. Maybe, you know, things happen. Parent is overworked, isn't good at communicating, isn't comfortable with some topics, maybe doesn't even understand some topics and really can't educate the kid. Can't educate them right, can't educate them wrong. Just can't. Just doesn't have the capability. What is the best situation for that person? Is it the best situation for that kid to be educated by that one parent who doesn't have any ability to get it right? No. I'm not judging right. This is not—don't interpret this as racial or anything else. Just some parents are better than other parents across all types.
So in a situation where you have a completely useless parent, I don't know, would the school do a worse job of raising the kid? Who's ever studied that? And how do you know if that parent is so bad? So when I say I agree with conservatives about the parents making the choice, I do. But you have to understand that's only good for people with strong family belief structures and willing to really make that work. It's definitely better for them. But one size doesn't fit all.
So you can see why people who have seen the other kind of life where the family structure is just broken everywhere, you can see why they say you don't let the school do it because there's no family to do anything here. I can see that. But as a system, which is better? And the system that's better is that the parents do it if they demand it. That's the better system.
So you know, ultimately it's going to be down to power. So whoever has the most power will win. And it looks like DeSantis is probably going to win. So that's how the system works.
All right. What percent of parents are completely useless? Good question. I will put that to the audience. What percentage of parents would you say are above the line of capable? Wherever above the line of capable. All right, so we're—this will be the capable number, not the incapable. How many are capable? Somebody's saying 75 percent of parents are capable, but others 30.
See, that probably informs your opinion of who should be in charge, right? If you thought only 25 percent of parents were even capable, you might lean toward well, let the school do it because you know you don't want to ruin 75 percent of kids. Yeah, and I guess we don't know. And everybody would have a different idea of what capable looks like, etc. But I'll tell you my observation is the school raises your kid no matter what.
So that I guess part of the reason that I'm a little less engaged in this topic is that if you've observed children at all, if they go to school, if they go to public school—because that's a separate option, right? You know, a lot of people would like to have the option of taking them to a private school or a different school. But if they go to public school, the school raises your kid. There's nothing you could do about it. And it's their friends who do it.
Do you know all that sexuality stuff that you want the parent to teach? It's coming from their friends. You know, the parents can try, "Hey, let me sit you down and tell you all about this LGBTQ stuff, kids, when you're old enough." By the time your parents sit you down and talk to you, the kids' friends have already completely indoctrinated them into whatever the hell they believe.
Now the good news is that the whole LGBTQ thing is very accepted in the younger generation. So it's almost a non-issue. It's more like a curiosity but it's not like a judgment sort of thing for them. Where'd they get that? Did they get that from the school? Did they get that from their parents? No, most parents don't say anything. Most schools don't say anything. Except I'll give you an example. When I went to school a million years ago, we had an art teacher who was, I'm going to say, obviously gay. Could I be wrong? Yeah, I suppose I could have been wrong. And everybody in the town could have been wrong. And that fine young man that he lived with could have been just a friend, maybe. I mean, but trust me on this. I had a gay art teacher.
Now this was way before wokeness. But I have to say it probably normalized it for me just by example. Just the fact that he existed and he wasn't fired for it. People made unkind remarks behind his back, of course, in those days. But I think it normalized it. So all you have to be—you have to be sort of humble about what a parent could even do to a kid because the kids are just seeing examples of stuff and talking to their friends. That's got to be 75 percent of it, plus genetics. If you take the kid's genetic propensities, their peer pressure, and just the stuff that they're observing on TV and everywhere else, that's 90 percent of their socialization. And the parents might be 10 percent about pick up, you know, clean your room and show up on time. That's about it.
But despite the minimal impact that I think parents actually have on that specific kind of a question, I think the system works better when the parents have that power and not the state, whenever you can make that happen. Because one of the choices that the parent could make is oh, let the school do it. So maybe that's just choice. Or you know, wait a few years when the kid is older and the school could do it. But really I guess the question is more about the age it's happening, isn't it? It's not even so much—was your gay teacher an ideologue? Doesn't matter to the story. And he was, by the way. He had a big impact on me, obviously, since I'm in art. So I would say he was one of my teachers who probably had one of the biggest positive impacts on me.
All right. And let's talk about Ukraine. Have you noticed that the Ukraine story is starting to turn into, well, those Ukrainians might be able to destroy enough Soviet-era weapons that the Russians are using that the Ukrainians could actually win. So the major media is starting to suggest that those Ukrainians have pretty good weapons and they're getting trained in new weapon systems that maybe we don't know all the details about. And that the Russians are being at least stopped or repelled.
Now here's the interesting thing about the Ukraine situation to me. And I hate the fact that war is interesting, but I can't help it. The outcome is going to depend on tipping points. Meaning that there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff in the context of war that gets really close to a failure point but doesn't necessarily fail. But if any one of those things that is coming right to the failure point fails, then you have a result.
For example, how much equipment could Russia lose as a percentage of its big equipment before it wouldn't be functional? 25 percent? Because it might have lost 25 percent already. 40 percent? If they lost 40 percent of their big equipment, would they say oh, we're gonna lose all of it if we just keep doing this? Like at what point would they say we have not gained any territory and we're now down to only 60 percent of our army or whatever. So Ukraine might actually be close to some kind of a tipping point militarily, maybe.
Now what about supply lines? We never hear about the Ukrainian supply lines, do we? We only hear that there are problems with the Russian supply lines. Could be because the locals are providing food and channels to get it, etc. Who knows? But both of those are near a tipping point. There's got to be a tipping point where one of the armies will run out of fuel, one of them runs out of bullets, runs out of—probably not bullets—but runs out of food. There's got to be a tipping point, right?
And how many drones would it take before Ukraine is clearly going to win? Well, they've got several hundred coming. Is that enough? I actually think several hundred could be close to a tipping point. If it were ten thousand I'd say okay, that's enough, they're gonna win if they were trained to use them and you know they were deployed. It's not going to be 10,000 but it might be a thousand. If you had a thousand good drones and let's say 50 percent of them were reusable types, not suicide types, I feel like that would push it over the tipping point.
So anyone who says that there's some obvious way that this is going to go, I think that's the worst prediction. The worst prediction is that anything obvious is going to happen because it's all about these little tipping points. And none of those are predictable. Any one of those could go and just collapse the whole situation.
Can you get a micro lesson on flirting? Okay, all right, I'll give you a micro lesson on flirting. Do everything you can to not have to. So if you're flirting and that's like that's the way you're going to win, if that's all you got, you're probably already lost. A better strategy would be to work on your fitness and your style and make sure your haircut and your skin looks good. And you know, you're doing everything you can to present yourself as something that somebody would want. Because if you do that, then flirting can be reduced to "Hi, I'm Bob." That's it.
If you get the big stuff right, the flirting is just hi, smile, make eye contact. Do you know how a woman can flirt? Let me tell you. A woman can flirt. I'm going to give you my impression which will be horrifying. This is going to be horrifying. My impression of a woman flirting with maximum, like just full force. This is full-on flirting. "Hi." That's it. Done. Direct eye contact and a smile. You're done. Almost every guy will think, I think she's into me.
I remember for a time my local grocery store was forcing the employees to act extra nice to the customers. It was like a corporate thing. So you'd go in there and they'd be like, "How are you? Nice day." It was like a little over the top. Not long after that they never could hire an attractive female cashier. Do you know why? Because it felt like they were hitting on you. And I think that they probably all got hit on back. Because if the 65-year-old guy with weird hair at the cash register says, "Hey, how you doing?" you just think he's friendly. But if the 28-year-old attractive-looking woman says, looks at you directly and says, "Hi, how's your day?" Do you know what every guy thinks? I think she's into me a little bit. That feels like flirting. And it probably was a problem. So basically the attractive female cashier demographic just disappeared from that store and never came back. I don't know why.
Unless it was that. Now men of course would be harder to flirt. But like I said, you just have to present yourself as confident primarily. Have a job and a gym membership. You're done, right? Be confident, have a job and a gym membership, and things will probably work out for you. That's about it. Oh, and interested. Yes. Well, the best way to show interest is to be interested. To ask people about their situation, especially if it's a bad situation. If you show empathy.
By the way, this is the best definition of charisma I've mentioned this before but it's worth it again. Charisma, I heard it defined once as a combination of power plus empathy. And when you first hear that you're like, how does that work? Why is that? And I'll explain it. If you saw somebody who had power but no empathy, in other words they didn't care about you, they would literally be dangerous or feel dangerous. You wouldn't want that person in charge because they don't care about you and they have all this power. That's the worst possible situation.
You wouldn't want necessarily to hang out with somebody who had plenty of empathy but no power because you're probably going to end up helping them. Right now you might like those people but in terms of a leader you want somebody who has ability you don't have but also cares about you. Now that goes to flirting, especially male flirting. So if you're male you have to demonstrate some kind of power. The power could be confidence, money, position. It could be just your physicality, something like that. That's your power. And so it doesn't have to be real direct power. It has to be like the impression of power, right? Just the impression. However you want to sell that.
So you create the impression of power and then you combine that with interest and empathy. And instead of using your power to get what you want, you say how can I help you? What can I do for you? How was your day? Oh, and then show actual interest. Now if you're faking it, it doesn't work and people can see through falsehood. But if you actually do care about people, it would work fine.
So the best flirting you can do is to be charismatic. Show you have some kind of power. You're genetically gifted if you are. You're strong maybe because you made yourself that way or you're successful. And somehow you've got to project that in some way that other people can see without you bragging. And then act empathetic and you're done. Boom.
But if you do the overly flirty flirty thing, that's too much. Now I'll also tell you that a compliment, if it's given sincerely and confidently, can act like a flirt while being just matter of fact. So if you do it right people will accept the compliment as intended. It'll have a big impact. But you don't have to have a let's say a begging simp-like approach to doing it. You could just say, just give your opinion.
All right. I believe that I have now accomplished the impossible: made a fascinating, wow, hour-long presentation without any content whatsoever. And maybe improve some of your days. You don't know. I don't know. So we'll see. Some of you are going to say it's the best livestream ever. I know, I know. Some don't. But I will talk to you tomorrow in any case. See you tomorrow.
good morning ladies and gentlemen and uh is it my imagination or did it used to be that if you were talking about a bride and a groom they both sounded like good words bride sounds like a good word and i'm not even going to say that other word now but uh if you'd like to take today's experience up to the highest level of excellence and would you settle for less look at you come on just look at you look at you look at you yeah you don't settle you're the kind of person who will take it all you don't leave money on the table no you don't so to take this to the ultimate experience all you need is well a copper mug or a glass of tanker tell us this time you can't eat your flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee barbara made it everybody barbara finally made it for the simultaneous zip barbara this one's for you it's the dopey mean hit of the day it's the thing that makes everything better especially barbara's day it's called the simultaneous sip barbara do you have witnesses because i'm talking to you directly you didn't see this coming did you is it freaking you out barbara it's about us now it's just me and you barbara get ready are the people around you watching this because if this is happening to you alone it's gonna be aw it's gonna be terrible because you're gonna be like is anybody seeing this my my ipad is talking directly to you to me that's right barbara i'm talking directly to you get ready for the simultaneous sip the rest of you can join in too with barbara go and that ladies and gentlemen yes i'm sorry i just read a funny comment on the local platform now let me tell you a little story and here's why today i looked at the news to prepare for my award-winning well not yet but i think he had award-winning uh live stream and i said to myself well it's sort of a sort of a thin news day but yet you expect nearly 45 minutes of quality entertainment and i was just talking to the locals platform before i signed on to youtube and i said hmm challenge to see if i could come up with a story that would be useful you know you would actually get something from it and it would fill in the time because with less than 15 seconds to go i didn't have enough content to go more than 10 minutes but why is it that i wasn't worried whatsoever well how many times have i told you i took the dale carnegie course it was just the most awesome thing one of the many things you learn is to be prepared to give a speech at any time isn't that weird that's such a specific skill isn't it you should be prepared to give a speech anytime just somebody might say scott could you stand up and give us a few words and you'd be like look so you should be prepared now let me tell you a story where this mattered a number of years ago i was doing a book tour where you go around the country to various big book stores and you sign a lot of copies of your book and one of the big stores i went to was in denver i think it was a not just a bookstore it was almost like a complex it was like a major bookstore plus operation and so you usually have a handler and your handler goes with you and takes you to the various places you have to visit for interviews and whatever and the handler and i walk in and the the manager of the bookstore greets us is all excited that i'm there and says oh we're so happy that you're here um people have been uh waiting in for your speech for over an hour and i said my what they said your your talk people are really excited about your talk and i said my what my what it sounded like you said talk they said yeah your talk that you're gonna give the the room is full it's an overflow capacity can't believe how many people showed up and i said the room the talk the what i thought i was just there to sign books and she goes yeah and she takes me to the room and opens the door and there's this enormous auditorium full of people who are waiting for my talk that i had no idea i was giving until i showed up now what happened well i took the deli i may have mentioned because i took the dale carnegie course i had a speech and so i just gave it that was it and so i'm demonstrating to you what i learned in the dale carnegie course so because i was light on material i always have like a little bag of uh stories that have some useful point to them so my useful point is it is really really useful to have a little bag of stories and you might want to have one that's sort of something about your company or one that's like an interesting thing you would tell you know if you were asked to be interesting at a party you just have five stories that you that you could just whip out in a minute very useful there you go now um let's talk about immigration rasmussen had a little poll and uh 35 percent of people they polled adult you know likely voter types support the trend of rising illegal immigration so 35 percent of the people who vote or likely to vote more than a third are in favor of increasing illegal activity specifically immigration would you have guessed it was that high it's funny that they say illegal immigration now if the question had been should we increase immigration then i could see a third of the people saying yeah you know in my opinion we should have more immigration i could understand somebody having that opinion i don't really know what the right number of immigrants is there's some number that's good there's some number that's too little too few because we actually almost certainly need some kind of immigrant flow but there's some number that's too big i don't know what that number is anyway and so for some reason we all avoid the only thing that matters which is what would be the right number and right composition you know of educated versus laborer types so um but anyway more than a third of the country supports the illegal type of immigration so i guess they would they would imagine it should be legal i suppose would be the interpretation including 19 who strongly support it they're like really in favor of the illegal kind of immigration 12 percent not so sure um so a majority 53 percent of democrats support the trend of record-setting illegal immigration but 75 percent of republicans say no and 54 of voters not affiliated with either party say no i guess so i wonder if this is part of the larger trend that conservatives like to be in charge of their family situation and the people that are furthest on the left are more in favor of a takes a village the school can raise your kid kind of thing it just seems like more of that because um if you wanted to like you know protect your family you could imagine that you might say less immigration because it might have some you know impact on your family but if you were like you know everybody is a village then you'd say hey it doesn't matter who you are come on in we'll figure it out collectively so i guess that makes sense philosophically that they would think that but i can't imagine well let me let me give you my overall philosophy of all these things whenever there's a question of individual benefit cost or benefit versus protecting a system if the system is a really important one i generally favor the system take for example capitalism i think capitalism works better than the alternatives but has all these problems pretty bad problems you know lots of inequality blah blah blah but still if it came to a choice of making everybody equal or having capitalism with all his flaws i would support the system because the system is what gets you to the the most people getting the most benefit over the longest period of time same with free speech you come up with lots of examples where you say i don't like that free speech but still you're better off supporting the system that free speech exists despite all of its horrible flaws according to you so immigration is the same thing it feels as if the democrats are looking at it as sort of a human individual human suffering kind of situation which it is it's 100 exactly that it's about human suffering and human condition but if you if you take the very and i i have respect for the position if you have the empathy that you can't release yourself from caring about the individuals and saying you know if they can make it to the border let's just do what we can to help them that's great empathy and as a human being i would actually probably quite appreciate you you're the kind of person i would want as a friend that you have that much empathy that you really can't see the system beyond the individual suffering that's somewhat is a somewhat worthy kind of respectable position even if you don't hold it you'd have to say you can't haze somebody who can't look past individual suffering to see the system but i guess i'm a worse person because i can do that so in my opinion most people would be best off with systems that have integrity so i'd like to see the immigration system work legally and effectively and then separately once you have your immigration completely controlled then you have a separate conversation about what's the right amount and you do it logically you do it in the way that supports the most benefit for the most people which almost certainly would be um america first in other words keeping america strong has a ripple effect of protecting the entire continent right do you think south america is better off because the united states is strong you don't even need much of a military in south america because who's going to attack south america nobody's going to take a run on south america because america is so strong so it's hard to separate what is good for america and its strength and how that benefits other countries you know is japan uh better off for having an american defensive umbrella over there probably problem all right breaking news um maybe it's already happened but uh apparently elon musk has gotten further than we imagined or some imagined and he's raised the money and it looks like they could make a deal twitter and elon musk today so there might actually be an announcement today that elon musk is buying twitter and it's going through now i'm a little skeptical it seems a little too easy were any of you expecting it to be this easy and it could be that the threat of uh lawsuits was big enough that the board just said i were out which would be pretty rational pretty rational i should mention that i own some twitter stock so i guess it would be good for me if he buys it although i would have held it longer than you know that but yeah so it isn't my i suppose as an investor it wasn't exactly my preference but as a as an american i guess you know i guess i like the benefit to free speech um speaking of elon musk uh it makes me think of bill gates there's a meme that's being fact-checked so reuters facts and others are saying it's not true and the photo has been doctored there's a photo of bill gates crossing the street in which he has enormous breasts now i'm not talking about his just unflattering photos that you've seen i'm talking about actually photoshopped gigantic breasts and the and reuters felt the need to fact check that because there would be some people who imagined he had transitioned and he had enormous breasts but it's not true it is not true he has only average sized breasts so if you thought that bill gates had enormous breasts totally untrue they're larger than average they're healthy sized all right um speaking of freedom once elon musk buys twitter and returns free speech to all of us which i think we would all applaud i think the first order of business is she he should ban disney from the platform uh because i love free speech but disney am i right let me those guys so i do like free speech but with the exception of stuff i don't like so i will make an exception so um i have been convinced by the people on the internet who have made a good argument lots of times i don't change my mind i don't change my mind but this is this is one of those cases where when you're faced with a superior argument i think you have to fold to it and so the argument i've been presented with the last several days is that yeah free speech is great unless it's something you really really don't like and then it starts interfering with the actual workings of the government and if yours free speech is the kind that actually matters the kind that would change something that that's extra dangerous so the kind of speech that i think free speech should allow is the kind that agrees with all my personal views but beyond that i'd really like to see stuff banned so i'm hoping elon musk will just start banning the stuff i don't like because otherwise i don't think i could support this as a stockholder i'd have to vote against it i needed him in there banning i don't want uh because if if people start giving their opinions then things will happen i don't like and that would be weak and i don't want to be weak so i want to be strong and violate the constitution for things that i like and things i want okay some of you can't even tell what i'm kidding can you how many of you don't know that i'm not serious raise your hand come on raise your hand all right well um i am hearing some terrible arguments about the disney thing but are you all bored with that is everybody done with the disney story because here's what i think happened i think i think i would say hey free speech isn't more important than these things then people would say are you a groomer and i'd say oh i don't even think that's the right conversation and then i'd say hey free speech is still important and somebody would say but disney's deal is is uh better than other corporations and i'd say i don't even think that's the topic and that so i don't know if i ever even had a real conversation about it because you couldn't get anybody to even stick to the topic it was like well what about this other thing all right so there's nothing there for us to talk about i guess um here's but let me give you one useful um let's say lesson a micro lesson on analysis and this is the probably the most important thing that economists or people trained in that or people who have you know business training get right that people who don't have that kind of training get wrong and don't know that is wrong it's what i call the comparison problem if you compare the wrong things you're obviously going to come to a wrong conclusion right so one of the things that i heard the most from but only from people who don't have good comparison skills is that disney was getting a sweetheart deal compared to other corporations and why should they get like the extra deal that's not the right comparison if you're comparing disney to any other corporation that's completely nonsensical you might as well compare them to a grapefruit well a grapefruit doesn't get a good deal so why does disney it wouldn't make any sense just because they're a corporation and something else is a corporation that doesn't mean they should be compared for everything here's the comparison you should make how many gigantic corporations who could credibly credibly go to a state and say we can bring in 60 000 employees and millions of of uh travelers to your state which you want to be a destination for travel so our business is right on point with what you want to be it will bring in gigantic revenue for you and what we would like in return for the efficiency of building it primarily just for efficiency so that you and i can get our benefits as soon as possible uh how about we have some autonomy and that autonomy will have a certain length deal in the beginning this will be like really good for us but also really good for you because you're getting this this all this economic development so and on and on so the the correct comparison is this disney and what they asked florida for compared to the other company they asked florida for the same thing and could offer the same benefit in return that's the only comparison if you compared anything else then you're not well trained in comparing because if florida would have said no to another company that offered something similarly as awesome well then you'd say okay well why is disney getting the special deal if somebody else made the same offer shouldn't they get the same consideration and the answer is yes yes they should that's exactly what they should get so if two companies had made this offer to florida florida should have accepted both if three companies made that offer florida should have accepted all three have i made have i sold you that everybody who said other corporations didn't get this deal just they're not right or wrong it's not a question of right or wrong it's not even the right comparison it's like comparing it to a grapefruit it has no relevance whatsoever okay and that ladies and gentlemen is the useful part of our program we're now to the the part where i either have to tell you an interesting story possibly one that you prompted me for or we may be ending early which would be a tragedy for all of us i think you'd agree and while you're thinking what you would like me to tell you in terms of a story or possibly if you'd like me to heal anybody from any problems i will be taking this gratuitous extra sip and uh and watching your comments uh mushrooms is the question am i am i mad at you no i'm not bad at you um more about mushrooms well that does seem to be the issue of the day doesn't but i worry that i've talked about it too much i'll just i'll just give you the basic idea which is uh i thought i tried some recently but i don't think they were actually they were either inert or something so i don't have any recent experience with it my first experience i thought changed me forever so i don't know what's going on i don't know why once it was a profound life-changing experience and the second time it wasn't but one possibility is that i'd already changed i worry about that i mean i don't worry about it but i suppose that would be good yeah why would i want to change again exactly google education what's that uh shellenberger's chances in the election strangely good yeah michael schellenberger running as an independent with you know he's written books on everything from homelessness how a had to deal with that drug addiction energy policy directly related to california he's researched you know forest fire stuff basically the water problem every problem is specific to california he's actually become an expert on and he's an insanely good communicator and persuader so could he he actually does have a lane i think the difference between me saying he has a really high chance and predicting he actually will win is what the media does because he is so media friendly like he can he can appear on media left and right because he's an independent so he's not locked down of either media think about that just think about that who who who is the last person who is smart enough to figure out how to stake out a position in which cnn and fox news would both be equally happy to have you as a guest name one other person who has accomplished that can you now oh andrew yang okay well trump for a while and then he even gave up arnold actually actually arnold's pretty good uh arnold is good all right so i guess there are a few but uh mark cuban but you know i'm not he's not as political uh as he could be yeah elon musk right but they're not political remember so i'm talking about somebody actually running for office who would be just as desired on the left and right and here's the reason what makes news is is not just doing something well that's not news because people are doing things at various levels of quality all the time it can't all be news what's news is something somebody does something a different way and that's the thing he's got and the different way is so obviously superior it's a different way that literally nobody can argue with like what would be the argument against him having a deep knowledge and best-selling books on exactly the topic that you're trying to solve now you could argue you don't like his solution but you can't argue against that being a better process like having somebody who's really shown by his own production the work he's produced and the activism i mean he's been directly on the streets working on fentanyl and stuff so if you were to design a perfect candidate that candidate would be you know tall and good looking and have great hair jack yeah you those things shouldn't matter right it shouldn't matter that you're tall and good-looking you have a great hair but it does it does sorry it does um probably one of the best communicators that i've ever seen as a as a politician he's got that so now combine just those two things if that's all you had if all you had was the look and you were one of the best communicators anybody had ever seen you'd probably get elected to stuff right but on top of that he already demonstrated by writing several best-selling books a deep knowledge of everything from you know climate change and energy and nuclear power homelessness addiction literally exactly the issues that the state is dealing with nobody's ever put together a talent stack like that so if you ever saw a if anybody writes stories if this ever happens if the media ever says what does a perfect politician look like if you're going to build one the only thing he doesn't have is a uh ethnic um signature that california might want you know he doesn't have the you know the ethnicity or the gender or whatever it takes do you think that will be held against him probably probably but here's the thing he's not a republican i think it would definitely be held against him if he were a republican but remember gavin newsom is the most popular candidate in the in the state which doesn't seem to make sense does it but the reason gavin newsom could be a good-looking white guy with good hair and still be popular in california is because he's so pro the things that people want and schellenberger has like a better version of that he is pro what the people want with a demonstrated uh base of understanding that says he knows how to get it that's even stronger if he can sell that and he's probably one of the few people who could because he has those skills so if you see if you see like a major here would be the turning point if you saw a major media piece let's say wall street journal new york times describing how he's running the process and also maybe some of his policies for those specific things if you see that it means that that the major media is now paying attention and the way it works is you need at least one major publication to say something is the right frame or is the right story and then all the others just fall in line the stories don't make themselves the stories are made by the big publications and then everybody else says well that's the story because there are a million things you could talk about but the big publications tell you what you will talk about because everybody falls in line right so there's the there's the canary in the coal mine for you if you see one uh if you see something like new york times like a real profile that's positive and or wall street general or washington post i guess so if you see any of those three maybe maybe some of the other media doing a major piece and they talk about how he's doing it instead of you know a hip piece which you'd normally see or a love letter i mean if they just don't if they're just objective about it then i think he's gonna be president you know i'm not sure how many of you would have guessed that arnold schwarzenegger would be you know governor of california or ronald reagan you know we do like entertainers but we also are willing we mean in california we're willing to look at anything that looks like a good deal in the end you know i'm not you know as much as i and other people say oh it's about your ethnicity because everybody's woke in california or it's about your gender or whatever even though it largely is all of that goes away if the candidate is good enough it just all melts away because that's what gavin newsom did i mean all of that stuff didn't matter to him because he was a good enough candidate that's all he needed he schwarzenegger too schwarzenegger was a good enough candidate that he just evaporated those other concerns so if all newspapers supports them we'll all fall in line no that's the so tell for cognitive uh it's been a while since i mentioned this so some of you are new when you see somebody mischaracterize what you just said starting with the word so so you're saying that all lizards can fly whatever comes after that word so will definitely not be what you're saying and it's a sign that the person uh their own argument has fallen apart so when somebody responds with a so you've already won you could actually just walk away go oh there it is victory there's the so and the first time i ever tell you let tell you that you think what you can actually tell when you've won an argument by that one word really really that one word you put it in front of a sentence and that and that's that's all it takes you don't even need to know what the rest of the sentences got seriously yes yes seriously when you start looking for it you'll see it so clearly yeah all of this so what you're saying is is a guarantee that you just won the argument because and here's why if somebody still had an argument they would have used it they wouldn't have to mischaracterize what you're saying they would simply use what you're saying and say well here's why why the thing you're saying doesn't make sense if they had an argument otherwise they go so what you're saying is that uh even hitler would be okay as your roommate is that what you said no no nobody's saying that no it's not good for what all right let's see if i can uh my claim that my oh so somebody's saying that my claim that my bad experience with what i thought were mushrooms uh for me to say that maybe it wasn't actually active mushrooms is cognitive dissonance possible but there's no trigger for it in other words i could be wrong or i could be right but cognitive dissonance would require that there was something about my prior opinions that this would violate and nothing like that happened so there's nothing that could have changed my mind there's just some knowledge that i'm lacking which is what was in it now some have said that the difference between a good trip and a bad trip if you can call it that on mushrooms would be you know how much you like that basically but in both cases it would be a a i guess psychedelic or mildly mildly psychedelic effect and i didn't have any so uh if you take something in the higher dose range and you don't have any effect i'm not sure you'd call that a bad trip all i had was a really bad stomach ache that lasted 24 hours could be just stale yeah maybe who knows um so i don't think i i think that there was something else going on and two people had the same experience at the same time so i i doubt that i doubt that both had exactly the same unusual experience so anyway there's not much to say about that because i don't i don't have enough information about what it was that i ingested um it wasn't micro dosing so those of you who think i didn't take enough uh i i followed the directions i definitely took it off but if this doesn't tell you to not do drugs nothing will um it's interesting the the variety of experiences people have had it's really interesting yeah so apparently people have had experiences all over the place but i suspect it's because i i think we're thinking that the difference is in us and i think that's probably an illusion because there's no quality control for this particular illegal drug so if there's no quality control it has probably has more to do with the product than some state you're in so my guess is that you could be in a bad state and it would put you in a good mood if you got the good stuff and if you were in a bad mood and you got the bad stuff you'd think it was because your mood but maybe it was just a bad bag of stuff who knows who knows what do you think of woke corporations well um isn't today's wokeness tomorrow's uh um let's say on the same side of history it's hard to look at stuff in the present because all that matters is how we're going to look at it in a year or 10 years and you know i i try to take myself back and say okay what would it have been like when corporations were saying we're going to try to make sure we have more diversity today that sounds pretty routine doesn't it that sounds pretty well that's just normal why wouldn't they it's good for them good for the public yeah they should put some effort into that let's give us some diversity now if if you go too hard on that you know you can it's just discrimination but there's probably some way to do it that's only a little bit discriminatory but gets you some benefits maybe so if you look at that if you looked at it when it was happening it just looked like ogne has gone too far because i was in the middle of it when it did happen i lost two jobs because i was a white male so when that happened i said to myself well that's terrible it's an overreaction why are these companies being forced to be so woke and you know why can't i just do a good job and get promoted for my for my abilities you know why did why did my ethnicity have to even be an issue so that's what i thought at the time but because of those and other efforts corporations are more diverse than they used to be and so you look at it in with now a historical view of it and even i who as i said lost two jobs for being a white guy and i was told that directly by my bosses by the way at a large bank and then at the phone company so i'm not guessing you know it's not a conspiracy theory my boss in both places said sorry we won't be able to promote you because you're white and male i hated it but now i look at it you know 30 years of distance in the past and i say to myself you know i don't know if if that's the only way you could have gotten here and things do look better in in that one sense diversity has improved i don't know it's hard for me to judge it as harshly as i judged it when it was it was literally screwing me so so the first thing you have to do is say what would it look like in a few years and and one possibility is that in 10 years you're gonna say oh yeah um what disney was fighting for was mischaracterized because don't you think both sides are mischaracterized when you look at the the disney thing and desantis and the don't say gay both sides mischaracterize the other one's point right that's why it's just a stupid debate it's really just power you know it's people doing what they can because they can because it feels like power and it gives them a dopamine hit but basically it's just two liars facing off with each other it's hard for me to take sides with liars sometimes you have to i know what you're going to say sometimes you have to but i don't like to do it if if i could avoid it like even if the liar is on my side i don't really want to side with a liar not really but it's entirely possible that the only way desantis can prevail and the people on their side is to let's say exaggerate what's going on exaggeration is persuasion and i'm always in favor of persuasion for a good point so you know there's this line where you go from hyperbole to just flat out lying and this whole this whole topic is just to me it looks like people lie into each other so i feel a little a little bit like the only part i want to talk about is freedom of speech and that's why people keep getting mad at me because i'm not i'm not dealing with the the issue and the reason i'm not is because it's just two sides lying what am i going to add to that there's nothing to add to that just stay away from it run away now but the only thing i would add is that if you think that disney is trying to hurry your children what the hell they're not trying to hurt they're tr i i think i can say this with great certainty the disney's intention is not to hurt children they have a different opinion of what it looks like to to help them i guess and help everybody else it's just a difference of opinion now um conservatives consistently say that the family should be in charge of stuff like that and if you have a see here's here's why i think there's a difference conservatives are so strong family oriented that once you start with the assumption okay start with a strong family and then does it make sense that the family has more decision making and influence than the school yes it does if you start with the assumption of a strong family then other assumptions follow for that but if you're let's say on the left and you don't have an assumption that strong families are necessary or even needed then it doesn't make sense that families have the power because if you're a weak family structure there's sort of nobody to make the right decision no way to make it stick you might as well let the school do it now second question is if the school's going to do it whatever it is how do they do it right as opposed to making things worse so here's where i think you need to just to understand the decision if you think there's a right and a wrong decision on this family's deciding versus the schools deciding what to tell kids there's no right or wrong there's only what's right for some types of families if you have a strong family structure and two capable parents then it's absolutely better for the family to to inform the kids would everybody agree with that statement so far that so far if if you have a capable parental structure they should have the maximum amount of control over the children that's the best outcome because they're really capable by definition that's the setup but now but now let me change it let's say you've got one parent doesn't matter the gender you've got one parent it wasn't anybody's fault maybe you know things happen parent is overworked isn't isn't good at communicating isn't comfortable with some topics maybe doesn't even understand some topics and really can't educate the kid you can't educate them right can't educate them wrong just can't just doesn't have the capability what is the best situation for that person is it the best situation for that kid to be educated by that one parent who doesn't have any ability to get it right no i'm not judging right this is not don't interpret this as racial or anything else just some parents are better than other parents across all types so in a situation where you have a completely useless parent i don't know would the school do a worse job of raising the kid who's ever studied that and how do you know if that parent is so bad so when i say i agree with conservatives about the parents making the choice i do but you have to understand that's only good for people with strong family belief structures and willing to really make that work it's definitely better for them but one size doesn't fit all so you can see why people who have seen the other kind of life where the the family structure is just you know broken everywhere you can see why they say you don't let the school do it because there's no family to do anything here i can see that um but as a system which is better and the system that's better is that the parents do it if they demand it that's the better system so you know ultimately it's going to be down to power so whoever's whoever has the most power will win and it looks like desantis is probably going to win so that's how that's how the system works all right um what percent of parents are completely useless good question i will put that to the audience what percentage of parents would you say are above the line of capable wherever above the line of capable all right so we're this will be the capable number not the incapable how many are capable somebody's saying 75 percent of parents are capable but others 30.
see that that probably informs your opinion of who should be in charge right if if you thought only 25 parents were even capable you might lean toward well let the school do it because you know you don't want to ruin 75 of kids yeah and i guess we don't know and everybody would have a different idea of what capable looks like etc and but i'll tell you my observation is the school raises your kid no matter what so that i guess part of the reason that i'm a little less engaged in this topic is that if you if you've observed children at all if they go to school if they go to public school because that's a separate option right you know a lot of people would like to have their option of taking them to a private school or a different school but if they go to public school the school raises your kid there's nothing you could do about it and it's their friends who do it do you know all that uh sexuality stuff that you want the parent to teach it's coming from their friends you know the parents can try hey let me sit you down and tell you all about this lgbtq stuff kids when you're old enough by the time by the time your parents sit you down and talk to you your kids your the kids friends have already completely indoctrinated them into whatever the hell they believe now the good news is that the whole lgbtq thing is is very accepted in younger than the younger generation so it's almost a non-issue it's more like a curiosity but it's not like a judgment sort of thing for them where'd they get that did they get that from the school did they get that from their parents no most parents don't say anything most schools don't say anything except i'll give you an example when i went to school a million years ago we had a art teacher who was i'm going to say obviously gay could i be wrong yeah i suppose i could have been wrong and everybody in the town could have been wrong and that fine young man that he lived with could have been just a friend maybe i mean but trust me on this i had a gay art teacher now this was well be well before wokeness but i have to say it probably normalized it for me just by example just just the fact that he existed and uh he wasn't fired for any people people made unkind remarks behind his back of course in those days but i think it normalized it so all you have to be you have to be sort of humble about what a parent could even do to a kid because the kids are just seeing examples of stuff and talking to their friends that's got to be 75 of it plus genetics if you take the kids genetic propensities they're peer pressure and just the stuff that they're observing on tv and everywhere else that's 90 percent of their socialization and the parents might be 10 about pick up you know clean your room and show up on time that's about it but despite the minimal impact that i think parents actually have on that specific kind of a question i think the system works better when the parents have have that power and not the state whenever you can make that happen because one of the choices that the parent could make is oh let the school do it so maybe that's just choice or you know wait a few years when the kid is longer older and the school could do it but really i guess the question is more about the age it's happening isn't it it's not even so much was your gay teacher an ideologue doesn't matter to the story and he was by the way he was had a big impact on me obviously since i'm in art so i would say he was one of the one of my teachers who probably had one of the biggest positive impacts on me all right um and uh let's see let's talk about uh ukraine have you noticed that the ukraine story starting to turn into well those ukrainians might be able to destroy enough soviet ura weapons that the russians are using that ukrainians could actually win so the major media is starting to suggest that those ukrainians have pretty good weapons and they're getting trained in new weapon systems that maybe we don't know all all the details about and that the russians are being at least stopped or repelled now here's the interesting thing about the ukraine situation to me and i i hate the fact that war is interesting but i can't help it uh the the outcome is going to depend on tipping points meaning that there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff in the context of war that get gets really close to a failure point but doesn't necessarily fail but if any one of those things that is like coming right to the failure point fails then then you have a result for example how much equipment could russia lose as a percentage of its let's say big equipment before it wouldn't be functional 25 because it might have lost 25 already 40 if they lost 40 of their big equipment would they say oh we're gonna lose you know all of it if we just keep doing this like at what point would they say uh we have not gained any territory and we're now down to only 60 of our army or whatever so we ukraine might actually be close to some kind of a tipping point militarily maybe now what about supply lines we never hear about the ukrainian supply lines do we we only hear that there are problems with the russian supply lines could be because the locals are providing food and channels to get it etc who knows but both of those are near a tipping point there's got to be a tipping point where one of the armies will run out of fuel one of them runs out of bullets runs out of probably not bullets but runs out of uh food there's got to be a tipping point right and um how many drones would it take before ukraine is clearly going to win well they've got several hundred coming is that enough i actually think several hundred could be close to a tipping point if it were ten thousand i'd say okay that's enough they're gonna win if they were trained to use them and you know they were deployed it's not going to be 10 000 but it might be a thousand if you had if you had a thousand good drones and let's say 50 of them were reusable types not not suicide types i feel like that would push it over the tipping point so anyone who says that there's some obvious way that this is going to go i think that's the worst prediction the worst prediction is that anything obvious is going to happen because it's all about these little tipping points and none of those are predictable any one of those could go and just collapse the whole situation can you get a micro lesson on flirting okay all right i'll give you a micro lesson on flirting um do everything you can to not have to so if you're flirting and that's like that's the way you're going to win if that's all you got you're probably already lost a better strategy would be to work on your fitness and your style and make sure your hair cut and your skin looks good and uh you know you're doing everything you can to present yourself as something that somebody would want because if you do that then flirting can be reduced to hi i'm bob that's it if you get the big stuff right the flirting is just high smile make eye contact uh do you know do you know how a woman can flirt let me tell you a woman can flirt i'm going to give you my impression which will be horrifying this is going to be horrifying my impression of a woman flirting with maximum like just full force this is full on flirting hi that's it done direct eye contact and a smile you're done almost every guy will think i think she's into me i remember for a time my local grocery store was forcing the employees to act extra nice to the customers it was like a corporate thing so you'd go in there and they'd be like how are you you know a nice day it was like a little over the top not long after that they never could hire an attractive female cashier do you know why because it felt like they were hitting on you and i think that they probably all got hit on back because so so if the if this 65 year old guy with weird hair at the cash register says hey how you doing you just think he's friendly but if the 28 year old you know attractive looking woman says looks at you directly and says hi how's your day do you know what every guy thinks i think she's into me a little bit that feels like flirting and it probably was a problem so basically you know the the attractive female cashier demographic just disappeared from that store and never came back i don't know why unless it was that now men of course would be harder to flirt but like i said you just have to present yourself as confident primarily have a job and a gym membership you're done right be confident have a job and a gym membership and things will probably work out for you that's about it oh and interested yes well the the best way to show interest is to be interested to ask people about their situation especially if it's a bad situation if you show empathy by the way this is the best definition of charisma i've mentioned this before but it's worth it again charisma i heard it defined once as a combination of power plus empathy and when you first hear that you're like how does that work why is that and i'll explain it if you saw somebody who had power but no empathy in other words they didn't care about you they would literally be dangerous or feel dangerous you wouldn't want that person in charge because they don't care about you and they have all this power that's the worst possible situation you wouldn't want necessarily to hang out with somebody who had plenty of empathy but no power because you're probably going to end up helping them right now you might like lp people but in terms of a leader you want somebody who has ability you don't have but also cares about you now that goes to flirting especially male flirting so if you're male you have to demonstrate some kind of power the power could be confidence money position it could be just your physicality something like that that's your power and so it doesn't have to be real direct power has to be like the impression of power right just the impression however you want to sell that so you create the impression of power and then you combine that with interest and empathy and and instead of using your power to get what you want you say how can i help you what can i do for you how was your day oh and then show actual interest now if you're faking it it doesn't work and people can see through you know falsehood but if you actually do care about people excuse me it would work fine so the best flirting you can do is to be charismatic show you have some kind of power uh you're genetically you know gifted if if you are uh you're you're strong maybe because you made yourself that way or you're successful and somehow you've got to project that in some way that other people can see without you bragging and then act empathetic and you're done boom but if you do the overly flirty flirty thing that's too much now i'll also tell you that a compliment if it's given sincerely and confidently can act like a flirt while being well being just matter of fact so if you do it right people will accept the compliment as intended it'll have a big impact but you don't have to be you know have a let's say a begging simp like approach to doing it you could just say just give your opinion all right i believe that i have now accomplished the impossible made a fascinating wow hour-long presentation without any content whatsoever and uh maybe improve some of your days you don't know i don't know so we'll see some of you we're going to say it's the best live stream ever i know i know some don't but i will talk to you tomorrow in any case see you tomorrow
good morning ladies and gentlemen
and uh is it my imagination or
did it used to be that if you were
talking about a bride and a groom
they both sounded like good words
bride sounds like a good word and i'm
not even going to say that other word
now
but uh
if you'd like to take today's experience
up to the highest level of excellence
and would you settle for less
look at you come on
just look at you look at you
look at you yeah you don't settle you're
the kind of person
who will take it all
you don't leave money on the table no
you don't so to take this to the
ultimate experience all you need is
well a copper mug or a glass of tanker
tell us this time you can't eat your
flask a vessel of any kind fill it with
your favorite
liquid
i like coffee
barbara made it everybody
barbara finally made it for the
simultaneous zip
barbara
this one's for you
it's the dopey mean hit of the day it's
the thing that makes everything better
especially barbara's day
it's called the simultaneous sip barbara
do you have witnesses
because i'm talking to you directly
you didn't see this coming did you
is it freaking you out barbara it's
about us now it's just me and you
barbara
get ready
are the people around you watching this
because if this is happening to you
alone
it's gonna be aw it's gonna be terrible
because you're gonna be like is anybody
seeing this
my my ipad is talking directly to you to
me
that's right barbara
i'm talking directly to you
get ready for the simultaneous sip the
rest of you can join in too
with barbara go
and that ladies and gentlemen
yes
i'm sorry i just read a funny comment on
the local platform
now
let me tell you a little story
and here's why
today i looked at the news to prepare
for my award-winning
well not yet but i think he had
award-winning uh
live stream and i said to myself
well it's sort of a sort of a thin news
day
but yet you expect
nearly 45 minutes of quality
entertainment
and i was just talking to the locals
platform before i signed on to youtube
and i said hmm
challenge to see if i could come up with
a story
that would be useful
you know you would actually get
something from it and it would fill in
the time
because with less than 15 seconds to go
i didn't have enough content to go more
than 10 minutes
but
why is it that i wasn't worried
whatsoever
well how many times have i told you i
took the dale carnegie course it was
just the most awesome thing
one of the many things you learn
is to be prepared
to give a speech at any time
isn't that weird
that's such a specific skill isn't it
you should be prepared
to give a speech
anytime just somebody might say scott
could you stand up and give us a few
words and you'd be like look so you
should be prepared
now
let me tell you a story where this
mattered
a number of years ago i was doing a book
tour
where you go around the country to
various big book stores and you sign a
lot of copies of your book
and one of the big stores i went to was
in denver i think it was a not just a
bookstore it was almost like a complex
it was like a major bookstore plus
operation
and so you usually have a handler
and your handler goes with you and takes
you to the various places you have to
visit for interviews and whatever
and the handler and i walk in and the
the
manager of the bookstore greets us is
all excited that i'm there and says oh
we're so happy that you're here
um
people have been uh waiting in for your
speech for over an hour
and i said
my what
they said your your talk
people are really excited about your
talk
and i said
my what
my what it sounded like you said talk
they said yeah your talk that you're
gonna give the the room is full it's an
overflow capacity can't believe how many
people showed up
and i said
the room
the talk the what
i thought i was just there to sign books
and she goes yeah and she takes me to
the room and opens the door and there's
this enormous auditorium full of people
who are waiting for my talk
that i had no idea i was giving until i
showed up
now
what happened
well i took the deli
i may have mentioned
because i took the dale carnegie course
i had a speech
and so i just gave it
that was it
and
so i'm demonstrating to you
what i learned in the dale carnegie
course
so because i was light on material
i always have like a little bag of uh
stories
that have some useful point to them so
my useful point is it is really really
useful
to have a little bag of stories
and you might want to have one that's
sort of something about your company or
one that's like an interesting thing you
would tell
you know if you were
asked to be interesting at a party you
just have
five stories
that you that you could just whip out in
a minute
very useful
there you go
now um let's talk about immigration
rasmussen had a little poll
and uh
35 percent of people they polled adult
you know likely voter types
support the trend of rising illegal
immigration
so 35 percent of the people who vote
or likely to vote
more than a third
are in favor of increasing illegal
activity
specifically immigration
would you have guessed it was that high
it's funny that they say illegal
immigration now if the question had been
should we increase
immigration
then i could see a third of the people
saying yeah you know in my opinion we
should have more immigration i could
understand somebody having that opinion
i don't really know what the right
number of immigrants is there's some
number that's good
there's some number that's too little
too few
because we actually almost certainly
need some kind of immigrant flow
but there's some number that's too big
i don't know what that number is
anyway and so for some reason we all
avoid the only thing that matters
which is
what would be the right number
and right composition you know of
educated versus laborer types
so
um but anyway
more than a third of the country
supports the illegal type of immigration
so i guess they would they would imagine
it should be legal i suppose would be
the interpretation
including 19 who strongly support it
they're like really in favor of the
illegal kind of immigration
12 percent not so sure
um so a majority 53 percent of democrats
support the trend of record-setting
illegal immigration
but 75 percent of republicans say no and
54 of voters
not affiliated with either party say no
i guess
so
i wonder if this is part of the larger
trend
that conservatives like to be in charge
of their
family situation
and
the people that are furthest on the left
are more in favor of a takes a village
the school can raise your kid
kind of thing it just seems like more of
that
because
um if you wanted to like you know
protect your family
you could imagine that you might say
less immigration
because it might have some you know
impact on your family but if you were
like you know everybody is a village
then you'd say hey it doesn't matter who
you are
come on in we'll figure it out
collectively
so i guess that makes sense
philosophically that they would think
that but i can't imagine
well let me let me give you my
overall philosophy of all these things
whenever there's a question of
individual benefit
cost or benefit versus protecting a
system
if the system is a really important one
i generally favor the system
take for example
capitalism
i think capitalism works better than the
alternatives but has all these problems
pretty bad problems you know lots of
inequality blah blah blah
but still
if it came to a choice of making
everybody equal
or having capitalism with all his flaws
i would support the system because the
system is what gets you to the
the most people getting the most benefit
over the longest period of time
same with free speech
you come up with lots of examples where
you say i don't like that free speech
but still
you're better off supporting the system
that free speech exists despite all of
its
horrible flaws according to you
so immigration is the
same thing
it feels as if the democrats are looking
at it as
sort of a human
individual human suffering kind of
situation which it is
it's 100
exactly that
it's about human suffering and human
condition
but
if you
if you take the very
and i i have respect for the position
if you have the empathy that you can't
release yourself from caring about the
individuals
and saying you know if they can make it
to the border let's just do what we can
to help them
that's great empathy and as a human
being i would actually
probably quite appreciate you you're the
kind of person i would want as a friend
that you have that much empathy that you
really can't see the system
beyond the individual suffering
that's somewhat
is a somewhat worthy
kind of
respectable position even if you don't
hold it you'd have to say
you can't haze somebody
who can't look past individual suffering
to see the system
but i guess i'm a worse person because i
can do that
so in my opinion
most people would be best off
with systems that have integrity so i'd
like to see the immigration system work
legally
and effectively and then separately
once you have your immigration
completely controlled
then you have a separate conversation
about what's the right amount
and you do it logically
you do it in the way that supports the
most benefit for the most people
which almost certainly would be um
america first
in other words keeping america strong
has a ripple effect
of protecting the entire
continent right
do you think south america is better off
because the united states is strong
you don't even need much of a military
in south america because who's going to
attack south america
nobody's going to take a run on south
america because america is so strong
so
it's hard to separate what is good for
america and its strength and how that
benefits other countries you know is
japan
uh better off for having an american
defensive umbrella over there probably
problem
all right
breaking news um
maybe it's already happened but uh
apparently elon musk has gotten further
than we imagined
or some imagined and he's raised the
money and it looks like they could make
a deal
twitter and elon musk today
so there might actually be an
announcement today
that elon musk is buying twitter and
it's going through
now i'm a little skeptical
it seems a little too easy
were any of you expecting it to be this
easy
and it could be that the threat of
uh
lawsuits was big enough that the board
just said i were out
which would be pretty rational
pretty rational
i should mention that i own some twitter
stock
so
i guess it would be good for me if he
buys it
although i would have held it longer
than
you know that but yeah so it isn't my
i suppose as an investor it wasn't
exactly my preference but as a
as an american i guess
you know i guess i like the
benefit to free speech
um
speaking of elon musk
uh it makes me think of bill gates
there's a meme
that's being fact-checked so reuters
facts and others
are saying it's not true
and the photo has been doctored there's
a photo of bill gates crossing the
street in which he has enormous breasts
now i'm not talking about his just
unflattering photos that you've seen
i'm talking about actually photoshopped
gigantic breasts
and
the
and reuters felt the need to fact check
that
because
there would be some people who imagined
he had transitioned and he had enormous
breasts
but it's not true it is not true
he has only average sized breasts
so if you thought that
bill gates had enormous breasts
totally untrue they're larger than
average
they're healthy sized
all right um
speaking of freedom
once elon musk
buys twitter
and returns free speech
to all of us
which i think we would all applaud i
think the first order of business is she
he should ban disney from the platform
uh because
i love free speech
but disney am i right
let me those guys
so
i do like free speech but with the
exception of stuff i don't like
so i will make an exception
so um i have been convinced by the
people on the internet who have made a
good argument lots of times i don't
change my mind
i don't change my mind but this is this
is one of those cases where
when you're faced with a superior
argument
i think you have to fold to it
and so the argument i've been presented
with the last several days
is that yeah free speech is great
unless it's something you really really
don't like and then it starts
interfering with the actual workings of
the government
and
if yours free speech is the kind that
actually matters
the kind that would change something
that that's extra dangerous
so the kind of speech that
i think
free speech should allow
is the kind that agrees with all my
personal views
but beyond that
i'd really like to see stuff banned
so i'm hoping elon musk will just start
banning the stuff i don't like
because otherwise i don't think i could
support this
as a stockholder i'd have to vote
against it i needed him in there banning
i don't want
uh because
if if people start giving their opinions
then things will happen i don't like
and that would be
weak
and i don't want to be weak
so i want to be strong and violate the
constitution
for things that i like and things i want
okay some of you can't even tell what
i'm kidding can you how many of you
don't know
that i'm not serious
raise your hand
come on raise your hand
all right
well
um
i am hearing some terrible arguments
about the disney thing but are you all
bored with that
is everybody done with the disney story
because here's what i think happened
i think
i think i would say hey free speech
isn't more important than these things
then people would say
are you a groomer and i'd say
oh i don't even think that's the right
conversation
and then i'd say hey free speech is
still important and somebody would say
but disney's deal is
is uh better than other corporations and
i'd say
i don't even think that's the topic
and that so i don't know if i ever even
had a real conversation about it because
you couldn't get anybody to even stick
to the topic it was like well what about
this other thing all right
so there's nothing there for us to talk
about i guess
um
here's
but let me give you one useful
um let's say lesson
a micro lesson on analysis
and
this is the probably the most important
thing
that economists or people
trained in that or people who have you
know business training
get right
that people who don't have that kind of
training get wrong and don't know that
is wrong
it's what i call the comparison problem
if you compare the wrong things
you're obviously going to come to a
wrong conclusion
right
so one of the things that i heard the
most from but only from people who don't
have good comparison skills
is that disney was getting a sweetheart
deal
compared to other corporations and why
should they get like the extra deal
that's not the right comparison
if you're comparing disney to any other
corporation
that's completely nonsensical you might
as well compare them to a grapefruit
well
a grapefruit doesn't get a good deal
so why does disney it wouldn't make any
sense just because they're a corporation
and something else is a corporation
that doesn't mean they should be
compared for everything
here's the comparison you should make
how many gigantic corporations who could
credibly credibly
go to a state and say we can bring in 60
000 employees
and millions of
of
uh travelers to your state which you
want to be a destination for travel so
our business is right on point with what
you want to be it will bring in gigantic
revenue for you and what we would like
in return for the efficiency of building
it primarily just for efficiency so that
you and i can get our benefits as soon
as possible
uh how about we have some autonomy
and that autonomy will have a certain
length deal
in the beginning
this will be like really good for us but
also really good for you because you're
getting this this all this economic
development
so
and on and on so the the correct
comparison is this
disney
and what they asked florida for compared
to
the other company they asked florida for
the same thing and could offer the same
benefit in return
that's the only comparison
if you compared anything else then
you're not well trained in comparing
because if florida would have said no to
another company that offered something
similarly as awesome
well then you'd say okay well why is
disney getting the special deal if
somebody else made the same offer
shouldn't they get the same
consideration and the answer is yes
yes they should
that's exactly what they should get
so if two companies had made this offer
to florida florida should have accepted
both
if three companies made that offer
florida should have accepted all three
have i made
have i sold you that everybody who said
other corporations didn't get this deal
just
they're not right or wrong
it's not a question of right or wrong
it's not even the right
comparison
it's like comparing it to a grapefruit
it has no relevance whatsoever
okay
and that
ladies and gentlemen
is the useful part of our program we're
now to the the part where i either have
to tell you an interesting story
possibly one that you prompted me for
or
we may be ending early which would be a
tragedy for all of us i think you'd
agree
and while you're thinking what you would
like
me to tell you in terms of a story
or possibly
if you'd like me to heal anybody from
any problems
i will be taking this gratuitous extra
sip
and uh and watching your comments
uh mushrooms
is the question
am i am i mad at you no i'm not bad at
you
um more about mushrooms
well
that does seem to be the issue of the
day doesn't
but i worry that i've talked about it
too much
i'll just i'll just give you the basic
idea
which is uh
i thought i tried some recently but i
don't think they were actually
they were either inert or something
so i don't have any recent experience
with it my first experience i thought
changed me forever
so i don't know what's going on
i don't know why once it was
a profound life-changing experience and
the second time it wasn't but one
possibility is that
i'd already changed
i worry about that
i mean i don't worry about it but i
suppose that would be good
yeah why would i want to change again
exactly
google education what's that
uh shellenberger's chances in the
election
strangely good
yeah michael schellenberger running as
an independent with you know he's
written books on everything from
homelessness how a had to deal with that
drug addiction
energy policy
directly related to california he's
researched you know forest fire stuff
basically the water problem every
problem is specific to california he's
actually become an expert on and he's an
insanely good communicator and persuader
so
could he he actually does have a lane
i think the difference between
me saying he has a really high chance
and
predicting he actually will win
is what the media does
because he is so media friendly like he
can he can appear on media left and
right because he's an independent so
he's not locked down of either media
think about that
just think about that
who who who is the last person who is
smart enough to figure out how to stake
out a position
in which cnn and fox news would both be
equally happy to have you as a guest
name one other person who has
accomplished that
can you
now oh
andrew yang okay
well trump for a while and then he even
gave up arnold actually actually
arnold's pretty good
uh arnold is good
all right so i guess there are a few but
uh mark cuban but you know
i'm not he's not as political
uh as he could be
yeah elon musk
right but they're not political remember
so i'm talking about somebody actually
running for office
who would be just as desired on the left
and right and here's the reason
what makes news
is is not just doing something well
that's not news
because people are doing things at
various levels of quality all the time
it can't all be news
what's news is something somebody does
something a different way
and that's the thing he's got
and the different way is so obviously
superior
it's a different way that literally
nobody can argue with
like what would be the argument against
him having a deep knowledge
and best-selling books on exactly the
topic
that you're trying to solve
now you could argue you don't like his
solution
but you can't argue against that being a
better process like having somebody
who's really
shown by his own production the work
he's produced and the activism i mean
he's been directly on the streets
working on fentanyl and stuff
so
if you were to design a perfect
candidate
that candidate would be you know
tall and good looking and have great
hair
jack
yeah you those things shouldn't matter
right
it shouldn't matter that you're tall and
good-looking you have a great hair
but it does it does sorry it does
um
probably one of the best communicators
that i've ever seen as a as a politician
he's got that so now combine just those
two things
if that's all you had if all you had was
the look
and you were one of the best
communicators anybody had ever seen
you'd probably get elected to stuff
right
but on top of that
he already demonstrated by writing
several best-selling books
a deep knowledge of everything from
you know climate change and energy and
nuclear power
homelessness addiction literally exactly
the issues that the state is dealing
with nobody's ever put together a talent
stack like that
so if you ever saw a if anybody writes
stories if this ever happens
if the media ever says what does a
perfect politician look like
if you're going to build one the only
thing he doesn't have is a uh
ethnic
um signature that california might want
you know he doesn't have the
you know
the ethnicity or the gender or whatever
it takes
do you think that will be held against
him
probably
probably but here's the thing
he's not a republican
i think it would definitely be held
against him if he were a republican
but remember gavin newsom is the most
popular candidate in the in the state
which doesn't seem to make sense does it
but the reason gavin newsom could be
a good-looking white guy with good hair
and still be popular in california
is because he's so
pro the things that
people want
and schellenberger has like a better
version of that
he is pro what the people want with a
demonstrated uh base of understanding
that says he knows how to get it
that's even stronger if he can sell that
and he's probably one of the few people
who could because he has those skills so
if you see
if you see like a major
here would be the turning point if you
saw a major
media piece let's say wall street
journal new york times
describing how he's running
the process
and also maybe some of his policies for
those specific things if you see that
it means that
that the major media is now paying
attention and the way it works is you
need at least one major publication
to say something is the right frame or
is the right story
and then all the others just fall in
line
the stories don't make themselves
the stories are made by the big
publications and then everybody else
says well that's the story because there
are a million things you could talk
about
but the big publications tell you what
you will talk about because everybody
falls in line
right so there's the there's the canary
in the coal mine for you if you see one
uh if you see something like new york
times
like a real profile that's positive
and or wall street general or washington
post i guess
so if you see any of those three maybe
maybe some of the other media
doing a major piece and they talk about
how he's doing it
instead of
you know a hip piece which you'd
normally see
or a love letter i mean if they just
don't if they're just objective about it
then i think he's gonna be president you
know i'm not sure how many of you would
have guessed that arnold schwarzenegger
would be
you know governor of california or
ronald reagan
you know we do like entertainers
but we also are willing we mean in
california
we're willing to look at anything that
looks like a good deal
in the end
you know i'm not you know as much as i
and other people say oh it's about your
ethnicity
because everybody's woke in california
or it's about your gender or whatever
even though it largely is
all of that goes away
if the candidate is good enough it just
all melts away because that's what gavin
newsom did
i mean all of that stuff didn't matter
to him
because he was a good enough candidate
that's all he needed he schwarzenegger
too schwarzenegger was a good enough
candidate that he just evaporated those
other concerns
so if all newspapers supports them we'll
all fall in line
no
[Laughter]
that's the so tell for
cognitive
uh
it's been a while since i mentioned this
so some of you are new
when you see somebody
mischaracterize what you just said
starting with the word so
so
you're saying that all lizards can fly
whatever comes after that word so
will definitely not be what you're
saying
and it's a sign that the person
uh their own argument has fallen apart
so when somebody responds with a so
you've already won
you could actually just walk away go oh
there it is
victory there's the so
and the first time i ever tell you let
tell you that you think
what
you can actually tell when you've won an
argument by that one word
really
really that one word you put it in front
of a sentence and that and that's that's
all it takes
you don't even need to know what the
rest of the sentences got
seriously
yes
yes seriously
when you start looking for it
you'll see it so clearly
yeah all of this so what you're saying
is
is a guarantee that you just won the
argument
because
and here's why
if somebody still had an argument they
would have used it
they wouldn't have to mischaracterize
what you're saying
they would simply use what you're saying
and say well here's why why the thing
you're saying doesn't make sense if they
had an argument otherwise they go so
what you're saying is that
uh even hitler would be okay as your
roommate is that what you said no no
nobody's saying that no
it's not good for
what all right let's see if i can
uh my claim that my oh so somebody's
saying that my claim that my bad
experience with what i thought were
mushrooms
uh for me to say that maybe it wasn't
actually active mushrooms
is cognitive dissonance
possible
but there's no trigger for it
in other words i could be wrong or i
could be right but cognitive dissonance
would require that there was something
about my prior opinions
that this would violate and nothing like
that happened
so there's nothing that could have
changed my mind there's just some
knowledge that i'm lacking which is what
was in it
now
some have said
that the difference between a good trip
and a bad trip if you can call it that
on mushrooms
would be you know how much you like that
basically but in both cases it would be
a
a i guess psychedelic or mildly
mildly psychedelic effect and i didn't
have any
so
uh if you take something in the higher
dose range and you don't have any effect
i'm not sure you'd call that a bad trip
all i had was a really bad stomach ache
that lasted 24 hours
could be just stale yeah maybe
who knows
um
so
i don't think
i i think that there was something else
going on
and two people had the same experience
at the same time so
i i doubt that
i doubt that both had exactly the same
unusual experience
so anyway there's not much to say about
that because i don't i don't have enough
information about what it was that i
ingested
um
it wasn't micro dosing
so those of you who think i didn't take
enough
uh i
i followed the directions
i definitely took it off
but if this doesn't tell you to not do
drugs nothing will
um
it's interesting the the variety of
experiences people have had it's really
interesting
yeah so apparently people have had
experiences all over the place but
i suspect it's because
i i think we're thinking that the
difference is in us
and i think that's probably an illusion
because there's no quality control for
this particular
illegal drug
so
if there's no quality control
it has probably has more to do with the
product than some state you're in
so my guess is that you could be in a
bad state and it would put you in a good
mood
if you got the good stuff
and if you were in a bad mood and you
got the bad stuff you'd think it was
because your mood but maybe it was just
a bad bag of stuff who knows
who knows
what do you think of woke corporations
well
um isn't today's wokeness
tomorrow's uh
um let's say
on the same side of history
it's hard to look at stuff in the
present because all that matters is how
we're going to look at it in a year or
10 years
and
you know i i try to take myself back and
say okay what would it have been like
when corporations were saying we're
going to try to make sure
we have more diversity
today that sounds pretty routine doesn't
it
that sounds pretty well that's just
normal why wouldn't they
it's good for them good for the public
yeah they should put some effort into
that
let's give us some diversity
now
if if you go too hard on that you know
you can it's just discrimination
but there's probably some way to do it
that's only a little bit discriminatory
but gets you some benefits maybe
so if you look at that
if you looked at it when it was
happening
it just looked like ogne has gone too
far because i was in the middle of it
when it did happen i lost two jobs
because i was a white male
so when that happened i said to myself
well that's terrible
it's an overreaction why are these
companies being forced to be so woke and
you know why can't i just do a good job
and get promoted for my for my abilities
you know why did why did my ethnicity
have to even be an issue
so that's what i thought at the time
but because of those and other efforts
corporations are
more diverse than they used to be
and so you look at it in
with now a historical view of it
and even i
who as i said lost two jobs
for being a white guy and i was told
that directly by my bosses by the way
at a large bank and then at the phone
company
so i'm not guessing
you know it's not a conspiracy theory my
boss in both places said
sorry we won't be able to promote you
because you're white and male
i hated it
but now i look at it you know 30 years
of distance in the past and i say to
myself
you know
i don't know
if if that's the only way you could have
gotten here
and things do look better
in in that one sense diversity has
improved
i don't know
it's hard for me to judge it as harshly
as i judged it when it was
it was literally screwing me
so
so the first thing you have to do is say
what would it look like in a few years
and and one possibility
is that in 10 years you're gonna say
oh yeah um what disney was fighting for
was mischaracterized
because don't you think both sides are
mischaracterized
when you look at the the disney thing
and desantis and the don't say gay
both sides mischaracterize the other
one's point right
that's why
it's just a stupid debate
it's really just power
you know it's people doing what they can
because they can because it feels like
power and it gives them a dopamine hit
but basically it's just two liars facing
off with each other it's hard for me to
take sides with liars
sometimes you have to
i know what you're going to say
sometimes you have to
but i don't like to do it if if i could
avoid it
like even if the liar is on my side
i don't really want to side with a liar
not really
but
it's entirely possible that the only way
desantis can prevail
and the people on their side is to
let's say exaggerate what's going on
exaggeration is persuasion and i'm
always in favor of persuasion for a good
point
so
you know there's this line where you go
from hyperbole to just flat out lying
and this whole this whole topic is just
to me it looks like people lie into each
other so i feel a little a little bit
like the only part i want to talk about
is freedom of speech
and that's why people keep getting mad
at me because i'm not i'm not dealing
with the the issue
and the reason i'm not is because it's
just two sides lying
what am i going to add to that
there's nothing to add to that just stay
away from it run away
now but the only thing i would add is
that
if you think that disney is trying to
hurry your children
what the hell
they're not trying to hurt
they're tr
i i think i can say this with great
certainty
the disney's intention is not to hurt
children
they have a different opinion of what it
looks like to
to help them i guess and help everybody
else
it's just a difference of opinion
now
um conservatives
consistently say that the family should
be in charge of stuff like that
and if you have a
see here's here's why i think there's a
difference conservatives are so strong
family oriented
that once you start with the assumption
okay start with a strong family
and then does it make sense
that the family has more
decision making and influence than the
school
yes it does
if you start with the assumption of a
strong family
then other assumptions follow for that
but if you're
let's say on the left
and you don't have an assumption that
strong families are necessary or even
needed
then
it doesn't make sense
that families have the power
because if you're a
weak family structure
there's sort of nobody to make the right
decision no way to make it stick
you might as well let the school do it
now
second question is
if the school's going to do it whatever
it is
how do they do it right as opposed to
making things worse
so
here's where
i think you need to just to understand
the decision
if you think there's a right and a wrong
decision on this
family's deciding
versus the schools deciding what to tell
kids
there's no right or wrong
there's only what's right for some types
of families
if you have a strong family structure
and two capable parents
then it's absolutely better for the
family to to inform the kids
would everybody agree with that
statement so far
that so far
if if you have a capable parental
structure
they should have the maximum amount of
control over the children that's the
best outcome
because they're really capable by
definition that's the setup
but now but now let me change it
let's say you've got one parent doesn't
matter the gender you've got one parent
it wasn't anybody's fault
maybe you know things happen
parent is overworked
isn't isn't good at communicating
isn't comfortable with some topics maybe
doesn't even understand some topics and
really can't educate the kid
you can't educate them right can't
educate them wrong just can't just
doesn't have the capability
what is the best situation for that
person
is it the best situation for that kid
to be educated by that one parent who
doesn't have any ability to get it right
no i'm not judging right this is not
don't interpret this as racial or
anything else
just some parents are better than other
parents
across all types
so
in a situation where you have a
completely useless parent
i don't know would the school do a worse
job of raising the kid
who's ever studied that
and how do you know if that parent is so
bad
so
when i say i agree with conservatives
about the parents
making the choice
i do
but you have to understand that's only
good for people with strong
family belief structures and willing to
really make that work it's definitely
better for them
but
one size doesn't fit all
so you can see why people who have seen
the other kind of life where the the
family structure is just
you know broken everywhere
you can see why they say you don't let
the school do it because there's no
family to do anything here
i can see that
um but
as a system which is better
and the system that's better is that the
parents do it
if they demand it
that's the better system
so
you know
ultimately it's going to be down to
power
so whoever's whoever has the most power
will win
and it looks like desantis
is probably going to win
so that's how that's how the system
works
all right
um what percent of parents are
completely useless good question i will
put that to the audience
what percentage of parents
would you say are above the line of
capable wherever
above the line of capable
all right so we're this will be the
capable number not the incapable
how many are capable somebody's saying
75 percent of parents are capable but
others 30.
see that that probably informs your
opinion of who should be in charge right
if
if you thought only 25
parents were even capable
you might lean toward well let the
school do it
because you know you don't want to ruin
75 of kids
yeah and i guess we don't know and
everybody would have a different idea of
what capable looks like etc
and
but i'll tell you my observation is the
school raises your kid no matter what
so that
i guess part of the reason that i'm a
little less engaged in this topic
is that if you
if you've observed children at all
if they go to school
if they go to public school because
that's a separate option right
you know a lot of people would like to
have their option of taking them to a
private school or a different school but
if they go to public school the school
raises your kid
there's nothing you could do about it
and it's their friends who do it
do you know all that uh sexuality stuff
that you want
the parent to teach
it's coming from their friends
you know the parents can try
hey let me sit you down and
tell you all about this lgbtq stuff kids
when you're old enough
by the time by the time your parents sit
you down and talk to you your kids your
the kids friends have already completely
indoctrinated them into whatever the
hell they believe
now the good news is that the whole
lgbtq thing is is very accepted
in younger than the younger generation
so it's almost a non-issue it's more
like a curiosity but it's not like a
judgment sort of thing for them
where'd they get that did they get that
from the school did they get that from
their parents no
most parents don't say anything
most schools don't say anything except
i'll give you an example when i went to
school a million years ago
we had a art teacher who was
i'm going to say obviously gay
could i be wrong yeah i suppose i could
have been wrong and everybody in the
town could have been wrong and that fine
young man that he lived with
could have been just a friend maybe
i mean
but
trust me on this i had a gay art teacher
now
this was well be well before wokeness
but i have to say it probably normalized
it for me
just by example
just just the fact that he existed
and uh he wasn't fired for any
people people made unkind remarks behind
his back of course in those days
but i think it normalized it so all
you have to be
you have to be sort of humble about what
a parent could even do to a kid
because the kids are just seeing
examples of stuff and talking to their
friends
that's got to be 75 of it plus genetics
if you take the kids genetic
propensities
they're peer pressure
and just the stuff that they're
observing on tv and everywhere else
that's
90 percent
of their socialization
and the parents might be 10
about
pick up you know clean your room and
show up on time
that's about it
but despite the minimal impact that i
think parents actually have on that
specific kind of a question
i think the system works better when the
parents have have that power and not the
state
whenever you can make that happen
because one of the choices that the
parent could make is oh let the school
do it
so maybe that's just choice or you know
wait a few years when the kid is longer
older and the school could do it
but really i guess the question is more
about the age it's happening isn't it
it's not even so much
was your gay teacher an ideologue
doesn't matter to the story
and he was by the way he was
had a big impact on me
obviously since i'm in art
so i would say he was one of the one of
my teachers who probably had one of the
biggest positive impacts on me
all
right um
and uh let's see let's talk about uh
ukraine have you noticed that the
ukraine story
starting to turn into
well those ukrainians might be able to
destroy enough soviet
ura weapons that the russians are using
that ukrainians could actually win
so the major media is starting to
suggest
that those ukrainians have pretty good
weapons and they're getting trained in
new weapon systems that maybe we don't
know all all the details about
and that
the russians are being at least stopped
or repelled
now here's the interesting thing about
the ukraine situation to me
and i i hate the fact that war is
interesting but i can't help it
uh
the
the outcome is going to depend on
tipping points meaning that there's
going to be a whole bunch of stuff in
the context of war
that get gets really close to a failure
point
but doesn't necessarily fail
but if any one of those things that is
like coming right to the failure point
fails then then you have a result for
example
how much equipment could russia lose as
a percentage of its let's say big
equipment
before it wouldn't be functional
25
because it might have lost 25 already
40
if they lost 40 of their big equipment
would they say oh
we're gonna lose
you know all of it if we just keep doing
this like at what point would they say
uh we have not gained any territory and
we're now down to only 60 of our army
or whatever
so we ukraine might actually be close
to some kind of a tipping point
militarily
maybe
now what about supply lines
we never hear about the ukrainian supply
lines do we we only hear that there are
problems with the russian supply lines
could be because the locals are
providing food and channels to get it
etc who knows
but
both of those are near a tipping point
there's got to be a tipping point where
one of the armies will run out of fuel
one of them runs out of
bullets runs out of probably not bullets
but runs out of uh food
there's got to be a tipping point right
and
um how many drones would it take
before ukraine is clearly going to win
well they've got several hundred coming
is that enough
i actually think several hundred could
be close to a tipping point
if it were ten thousand i'd say okay
that's enough they're gonna win if they
were trained to use them and you know
they were deployed
it's not going to be 10 000 but it might
be a thousand
if you had if you had a thousand good
drones and
let's say 50 of them were reusable types
not not suicide types
i feel like that would push it over the
tipping point
so
anyone who says that there's some
obvious way that this is going to go i
think that's the worst prediction
the worst prediction is that anything
obvious is going to happen
because it's all about these little
tipping points and none of those are
predictable
any one of those could go
and just collapse the whole situation
can you get a micro lesson on flirting
okay
all right i'll give you a micro lesson
on flirting
um
do everything you can to not have to
so
if you're flirting and that's like
that's the way you're going to win
if that's all you got
you're probably already lost
a better strategy would be to work on
your fitness and your style and make
sure your hair cut and your skin looks
good and
uh you know you're doing everything you
can
to present yourself
as something that somebody would want
because if you do that
then flirting can be reduced to
hi
i'm bob
that's it
if you get the big stuff right
the flirting is just high smile make eye
contact
uh
do you know do you know how a woman can
flirt let me tell you a woman can flirt
i'm going to give you my impression
which will be horrifying this is going
to be horrifying
my impression of a woman
flirting with
maximum like just full force
this is full on flirting
hi
that's it
done
direct eye contact
and a smile
you're done
[Laughter]
almost every guy will think i think
she's into me
i remember for a time my local grocery
store
was forcing the employees
to act extra nice to the customers it
was like a corporate thing
so you'd go in there and they'd be like
how are you you know a nice day it was
like a little over the top
not long after that
they never could hire an attractive
female cashier
do you know why
because it felt like they were hitting
on you
and i think that they probably all got
hit on back
because so so if the if this 65 year old
guy with weird hair at the cash register
says hey how you doing you just think
he's friendly
but if the 28 year old
you know attractive looking woman says
looks at you directly and says hi how's
your day
do you know what every guy thinks
i think she's into me a little bit that
feels like flirting and it probably was
a problem so basically
you know the the attractive female
cashier
demographic just disappeared from that
store and never came back
i don't know why unless it was that
now
men of course would be harder to flirt
but like i said you just have to present
yourself
as confident
primarily
have a job and a gym membership
you're done
right be confident
have a job
and a gym membership
and things will probably work out for
you
that's about it
oh and interested yes
well the
the best way to
show interest is
to be interested
to ask people about their situation
especially if it's a bad situation if
you show empathy by the way this is the
best definition of
charisma
i've mentioned this before but it's
worth it again
charisma i heard it defined once as
a combination of power plus empathy
and when you first hear that you're like
how does that work
why is that and i'll explain it if you
saw somebody who had power
but no empathy in other words they
didn't care about you they would
literally be dangerous
or feel dangerous you wouldn't want that
person in charge
because they don't care about you and
they have all this power that's the
worst possible situation
you wouldn't want necessarily to hang
out with somebody who had plenty of
empathy
but no power
because you're probably going to end up
helping them
right now you might like lp people but
in terms of a leader
you want somebody who has ability you
don't have
but also cares about you
now that goes to
flirting especially male flirting
so if you're male
you have to demonstrate some kind of
power
the power could be
confidence
money position
it could be just your physicality
something like that that's your power
and so it doesn't have to be real direct
power has to be like the impression of
power
right just the impression however you
want to sell that
so you create the
impression of power and then you combine
that with interest and
empathy and and instead of using your
power to get what you want
you say how can i help you
what can i do for you
how was your day
oh and then show actual interest now
if you're faking it it doesn't work
and people can see through you know
falsehood
but
if you actually do care about people
excuse me it would work fine
so the best flirting you can do is to be
charismatic
show you have some kind of power
uh you're genetically
you know gifted if if you are
uh you're
you're strong
maybe because you made yourself that way
or you're successful and somehow you've
got to project that in some way that
other people can see without you
bragging
and then act empathetic and you're done
boom but if you do the overly flirty
flirty thing
that's too much now i'll also tell you
that a compliment
if it's given sincerely and confidently
can act like a flirt
while being
well being just matter of fact
so if you do it right
people will accept the compliment as
intended it'll have a big impact but you
don't have to be
you know
have a let's say
a begging simp like approach to doing it
you could just say
just give your opinion
all right
i believe that i have now
accomplished the impossible
made a fascinating
wow
hour-long
presentation
without any content whatsoever
and uh
maybe improve some of your days you
don't know
i don't know
so we'll see
some of you we're going to say it's the
best live stream ever i know i know
some don't but i will talk to you
tomorrow in any case
see you tomorrow
