Episode 1782 Scott Adams - What Do Kim Kardashian, Alex Jones and Adam Schiff Have In Common?

everybody and welcome to the highlight of not only your life and my life but civilization itself something like 13.9 billion years have passed since the big bang and all of that leading to this moment think about it if things had been just a little bit different you wouldn't even be here and then i would be talking to i don't know what dinosaur anything could have happened but if we want to take it up to a less absurd level today and probably do all you need is a copper mugler glass tanker chalice or stein a canteen jogger flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip has anybody ever done it before anybody anybody yes of course you have it's the best thing that's ever happened to you go oh i tried to get all of my senses involved you got the touch the smell the taste i sort of listened to myself slurping a little bit there i looked at it yeah everything that's what you call a full body experience and i think we just had it together not that there's anything wrong with that now i have a question for you how do you plan a vacation in the current environment is anybody having that problem you think to yourself you know a few few weeks from now or whatever a few months i think i'll book myself a a plane trip and i'll take myself a trip you don't know if masks are coming back which would you know ruin a trip and you don't even know if you'll have an airplane because the the flights are so bad right now the number of cancellations that you can't be entirely sure that if you book a flight it'll actually happen now that was always the case that you couldn't be entirely sure but i feel like it went from a you know a 95 odds in your favor too closer to what 65 percent i'm not i don't even know what the odds are of missing your flight these days or at least being a day late or something like that i mean i don't know how you plan a plan to do anything these days anyway get your flight insurance or something because if you plan a big vacation you don't want to blow it you don't all right uh i saw the best suggestion i've seen from uh a tweet by david boxenhorn and he's he's helping us out with this whole pronoun stuff and i was saying that what we need is some pronouns that everybody can agree on that aren't being used for something else you know don't use they because that's sort of already being used for something else so david suggests that since there are all these different pronouns you get yours you know he she they that if you just took the first letter from the pronouns that are out there you could create you know your own sort of universal one so let's see what we'd get if you just took the first letter of the solution she he it and they now that would be an s and h and i oh wait all right so it wasn't the best idea in the world but i like where it's heading generally speaking maybe you need to arrange the letters a little differently now somebody mentioned that this had already been done with the letter z like calling calling people z you know instead of he or she yes he did that and i said to myself um almost there i mean i can see what you're doing there it's a brand new word so that's good right but here's what i suggested could we have a word that sounds less like a nazi invasion that's all you know it just i'm not asking a lot i want i'd like a a pronoun that's not being used for a completely different purpose already is clear i mean i'm not asking a lot doesn't make you sound like a nazi storm trooper is that is that a high bar i mean i didn't think it was but nobody's crossed it yet so let's see if somebody can do that now as you know reality and parody merged sometime in the 2021 period i think would be when historians will call it and that's a period where you really can't tell the difference between a joke and something serious because the serious stuff became so ridiculous that the jokes you stayed where they were and then they just merged you want another example of that does it does that sound like hyperbole does it sound ridiculous that parody and reality have merged to the point where you just can't tell the difference well here's a little story from today apparently the atlantic magazine this this is fake news so somebody did a fake headline that made it seem as if the atlantic magazine had done it and the fake headline was the heroism of biden's bike fall and then the subtitle was the president gracefully illustrated an important lesson for all americans when we fall we must get back up now now how many of you thought that probably was a real headline in a real in this magazine i'll bet you well over 90 of the people who saw it probably thought it was real wouldn't you say you know before you knew it was a fake wouldn't you say that that sounds real it actually does because as absurd as it sounds it's not more absurd than than the news that you'll see today somewhere there will be more absurd things in the real news today no difference well as part of our understanding of why things aren't the way they they used to be uh adam dopamine on twitter adam md he points out that eisenhower missed one key element when he warned us about the military-industrial complex so remember eisenhower gave a big speech in his day and said watch out for the the people who make the weapons working with the people in government to make money by starting wars essentially and sure enough it looks like there's some of that going on but the part the left hand as adam dopamine points out is you should include the news in that it should have been the military news complex because unless the news is complicit you can't get away with it so you really need that whole complex and i think that's sort of a useful uh useful useful foundational understanding you know follow the money but there's somebody running cover for the money and diverting you so there's somebody on the uh let's say the the bank heist team whose job it is when the bad guys run out and turn left and the police arrive it's his job to say he went that way and point the wrong direction and when i say he i mean all right um what do these people have in common let's see if you can get this in the comments here's your quiz three people what do they have in common alex jones adam schiff and kim kardashian go what do they have in common something major you know and it's not you know not the funny stuff something real dog punchers that was a good guess but we have no information uh about alex jones ever punching a dog so that was a good guess somebody said they're all dog punchers and i thought kim kardashian probably adam schiff definitely but no information about alex jones he might be a dog lover so it was a good guess but i don't think it fits uh all had sex tapes that's a that's a good guess yeah um probably probably but that's not where that's not what i was going for all have dated p davidson checking the list yeah that too well okay i didn't realize there were that many coincidences there are quite a few of them but here's what i was going for i was going for they're all in the same line of work they're all in the same line of work let me read them again alex jones adam schiff and kim kardashian same job you know different bosses same job and here's what their job is it's an attenuated reality attenuated reality they start with something that's like reality-ish but they create something that's not reality from it for the purpose of getting attention and then they can monetize that attention or turn it into power in the case of adam schiff maybe also monetize so none of them are different in my view from wrestling when you were a kid did you ever watch wrestling and you thought to yourself people are saying this is fake but i'm not so sure this wrestling looks real to me i think they're really fighting and then later you learn it's an attenuated reality it's not reality it's sort of a base reality there's a you know fighters and there's a ring and there's an audience and and people probably get hurt and there's contact and but it's attenuated to get your attention it's more interesting alex jones is an attenuated reality he takes things that are at base are true but adds to it you could call it a theater theater would be exactly the right yeah thank you um sean and and is it a coincidence that adam schiff actually had some script writing ambitions i think he's written a few scripts so he actually has a theatrical background and kim kardashian there was a recently a story that there was some family meeting or something that was in the reality show but the complaint was that they scripted it and you know it was an artificial gathering in which they pretended something was real to which i said you just figured that out is there somebody who watches reality shows and thinks they're actually watching just them just filming what's happening is there anybody doing that is there anybody who still thinks wrestling is like a real sport i i wonder do people think that when you watch alex jones do you believe that the purpose is that you're seeing reality is that is that what you think you're watching because you should watch alex jones the kardashians and even adam schiff doing any of his public stuff as the same it's the same thing they start with reality they attenuate it in ways they get your attention for their own purposes but to imagine that any of that is real is a is a serious misunderstanding of i won't call it parody in reality but if you think that attenuated reality and reality you can treat them the same i think you should rethink that these are obviously attenuated reality situations and uh there's a new documentary or a movie i guess you'd say coming out about alex jones i think at the end of july so we'll talk more about that but i was looking at uh i just looked at a little trailer for that and you see just a snippet of alex jones defending what he does now his defense is this that he believes what he says to be true and that sometimes he's wrong and i look at that and i think maybe maybe like you can't really rule that out can you i mean think about it think about how easy a target alex jones is and then i'm going to give you his defense it's really simple it's a very simple defense he believes what he says but sometimes he's wrong and i hear that and i think all right nobody has ever presented evidence that he doesn't believe what he says am i wrong and then here's the second part here here's the mic drop alex jones asks us why we treat him differently than the new york times which also presumably believes what it says but sometimes they're wrong like weapons of mass destruction in iraq like really wrong like like wrong start a war wrong like that's as wrong as you can be and alex jones says why would you treat me differently we both believed what we said and we both could be wrong to which i say oh that's actually a complete defense there's nothing wrong with that defense at all the only way the only way he could be thwarted in that defense is if there's some recording of him saying you know i make all this stuff up now apparently there is some evidence that he likes the conspiracy theory domain so that part i think he said directly i believe that's you know also part of the trailer but that doesn't mean he doesn't believe it and i'm not entirely sure that believing things is a real thing anymore i feel as if we all choose things to believe and that um the reality is now so obviously subjective that we're a little bit aware of the fact that we're just choosing a reality does that does that feel true in a little in a small way but you can see that this is like a trend you know like it's a socially expanding trend that people understand that what they believe or what they act on as their reality they know is a selected reality a decision reality not an actual reality it's just one they choose to live in and i think that conspiracy theorists um often are making almost a lifestyle choice to say i'm gonna live in a world in which i treat this as true it's just a choice and on some level maybe they know it isn't true because did you ever see somebody who had a religion that wasn't yours and you talked to him you're like i don't know what's going on with this other person so whatever your religion is is probably the real one but suppose you're talking to somebody who got it all wrong they had the wrong religion and you look at them and you think but do they actually believe that like actually you really really believe that like if you if you put a a gun to the head of you know a loved one in their family and said i'm gonna kill your loved one you know i have some way to know the truth it's not possible but i have some way to know what you're really thinking do you really believe your own religion like all of it like like all the important parts you do you believe all of that and i think you'd find that people say well okay i mean if it's the life of my loved one is on the line it is sort of a chosen belief and uh while many of you are still saying no that's not true with me i'm actually living in reality and living in the real world and maybe you are maybe you are how would i know the only thing i'm sure is i don't know uh but maybe you got the right one speaking of reality here's what here's why you could say with certainty we have no news industry in this country the most basic fact that you would want to know as a news consumer is this so biden recently said i think yesterday uh we need more refining capacity and he says this idea they don't have oil and and they don't have oil to drill and to bring up is simply not true so basically biden is saying that the oil industry is to blame for any shortages because there's plenty of oil with the leases and the drilling capacity they already have they just they can't refine it and so that's a problem with the industry itself having not built enough refineries now wouldn't you expect if you had a news industry they would fact check all that and then put it in context for you and then you would read it and it wouldn't matter if you were reading news from the left or the right because these are just really objective facts is it true that the industry just didn't build enough refineries and there's nothing stopping them so if they did everything would be fixed does that does that even feel a little bit true i don't know what the true story is so here's here things i've heard unreliably but also assumed to be true i believe the government is the problem with building refineries isn't it isn't the problem that the government either it's either state or local or federal or regulations of some types but uh did i not hear a quote and give me a fact check on this so i'm operating from faulty memory here i think this week the ceo of chevron this is the part you need to check said that he believes there will never be a refinery built in this country again did he say that the ceo said he doesn't believe it'll ever happen because the and i assume that the context was the regulatory burden is too hard am i right yeah it's just impossible for regulatory reasons so why not put it in central america can't everybody win if we put the refineries in central america there's got to be some you know are you telling me that nicaragua you know nicaragua was going to say no to a refinery with all the you know jobs and whatever positivity it could create there and they probably have lower you know regulatory burdens so couldn't uh couldn't kamala solve her problem and the ceo chevron can solve his problem and basically work as a you know as a system try to figure out how to make all that work as as one thing so one of the big problems and you see this all the time is we treat all of our issues like they're little silos but sometimes you could just connect two problems yeah for example you've got a labor shortage and you know this that's the economy and you've got an immigration problem can't we figure out how those two silos could work together to fix something it feel feels like we're we're handicapping ourselves by thinking all of our issues are like in their own little channel anyway so it's obvious we we have no news industry because i can't tell if biden is telling the truth that the industry is to blame or the industry is telling the truth that the government is to blame and i would think that both the news on the left and the right if they knew the answer would report it exactly the same oh yeah they'd love to build a refinery but the government's too burdensome or not whatever it is so i was watching the new press secretary biden's press secretary trying to answer a question about you know the economy and her she attempted to answer it by saying there's a bunch of stuff that isn't that bad right now which is true so it's not all bad we're not in the recession now blah blah but my overall impression of her was she didn't seem qualified for the job does anybody else have that feeling she seems unqualified for the job now i couldn't remember her name is it jean-pierre is that her name what is her actually name so i'm at least being respectful when i'm talking about her because i feel somewhat disrespectful i couldn't remember her name uh all right well look uh karine jean-pierre karen karine but i'm going to put a positive spin on it do you remember when conan o'brien first became a late show host and he would do his monologue and i don't know if he had the same reaction i did but my first reaction to conan and bro brian was oh god he makes me nervous because he looks like he's not qualified or he knows he's not qualified or he just seemed so uncomfortable in his own skin on stage that it made me uncomfortable but but then he got better because it's one of those things you can't really practice yeah there's no other there's no way to practice being a late night show monologue guy because it's not real practice so and then i would argue that he became you know one of the best at it because he got to practice i feel as if she could she could follow the same arc but at the moment the spokesperson is looking a little too uncomfortable with what she's saying and you do not want your spokesperson to look uncomfortable with what uh he or she or are saying so anyway i was just wanted to do do you have the same impression that she seems to lack confidence in her own answers and that lack of confidence is then makes you think maybe the administration doesn't know what it's doing it's a bad it's a bad combination to have somebody who looks uncomfortable in their job talking for you anyway but um on a positive note if i may be positive she looks like she's smart she looks like she has you know basic you know great capabilities so maybe maybe she becomes really good at this in a month you never know could happen give her a month to see what happens so biden administration wants to ban or greatly reduce nicotine in cigarettes and basically throw the whole cigarette industry into a into a tizzy and make it easier for people to quit so apparently at least there's some science of course the industry disputes it surprised to suggest that it would get people to quit what do you think of that now i've been an anti-smoking proponent and even public advocate for decades in public places but i'm much less interested in what people do in their private lives so do you think the government should get into this business what do you think i mean i do believe that this is likely to be something that would save tens of millions of lives in the long run that would be my guess if they get away with this and i'll say it that way if they actually basically wipe out the cigarette industry and make it less addictive i feel like it would save tens and millions of lives which doesn't mean you should do it somebody says it's like prohibition yeah so would there be immediately counterfeit cigarettes seems like it right yeah it would just become an illegal industry and we would just get them from the cartel like we get everything else yeah i don't know if it would work so i guess uh i'm anti-smoking but i'm pro-freedom so ah this one's a tough one because cigarette smoking mostly hurts yourself but on the other hand it might make my i don't know my health insurance cost more because other people are doing the wrong things i guess but you can't really go down that road either because that's you know an infinite problem because everybody's doing stuff that's dangerous you can't take account into account all of it all right i'm going to defend ivanka trump's opinion about january 6 here because it turns out it's pretty close to my own so uh cnn is trying to point out that in one video ivanka said she accepted barra's opinion that the election was fair and in other videos where she was not you know being asked by i think the committee she had said separately and earlier that you know there were there were things that needed to be looked into in the election meaning that maybe there's some some questions this should be answered about the election now that's pretty different from saying that election was rigged and do you think that those two things are necessarily incompatible here here's my take i'll overlay my opinion and maybe that's unfair but uh i feel like hers is so close to mine that i can do this so i'm going to defend my own opinion i separate the question of whether the election was fair from the question of whether you should support the system because i often think maybe always but i'll say often that protecting the system is going to be a higher priority uh than maybe fixing any individual outcome i just think the system's more important so as soon as the system elected biden i like many people said huh i don't know maybe maybe not maybe maybe not so i had my questions many people had questions but some of you will remember that i also immediately congratulated him on twitter and have never backed off from my decision that the system elected biden so when i say congratulation biden i'm saying okay i got some questions but i'm not gonna dismantle the system you're gonna have to give me a lot better a lot better evidence before i'm gonna like break the system because that's like the backbone of the country so i also have an assumption this is part of the context for my opinion that probably elections have been rigged in this country for hundreds of years yeah maybe in small ways maybe in big ways maybe it made a difference such as the kennedy election uh maybe it made a difference in you know johnson's political life maybe not i don't know i wouldn't know but in all of those cases i would still support you know the republic and the voting system so i believe that ivanka is saying something at least consistent with what i'm saying i won't i won't burden her by saying that her opinion matches mine but at least it's consistent yet which is that when barr said the election is fair he couldn't know if there was any unknown fraud right i mean by definition you don't know the thing you don't know so if there had been problems and nobody knew what they were how would barr know that how would anybody so barr couldn't know what he can now so when barr says the election is fair here's how i interpret it the system elected biden which is what i say yeah the system did what the system did we observed it it might have had problems but i'm going to support the system until you give me really really good evidence really good evidence and we're going to talk about that in a minute that there's something wrong right and in my opinion i haven't seen it yet i could i mean it's possible and i'm not sure it's possible to audit the full system i'm pretty sure it isn't so i would say ivanka is on good territory if she says she accepts the you know the bar interpretation that the election was fair i interpret that just meaning that it happened it there was an election we observed an election it picked a it picked a winner so yes that happened um but then you should also look into it if you've got questions that just seems like common sense you know the system is is better the system is healthier if you look into any allegations because then you can keep making sure that you're finding anything that's a problem i've got a theory that maybe a lawyer should not be allowed to run for office and it's a very it's based on a very obvious and simple concept people do what they're trained to do that's why training works it it wires your brain to think in a certain way the the benefit of learning economics actually has very little to do with economics i don't know if i've ever told you that before but the benefit of learning economics is it it wires your brain to simply view things a certain way that's productive that has nothing to do with the economy in many cases if you if you took economics so you could predict the future well good luck with that and nobody can do that all the economics of the world isn't going to tell you what's going to happen next year too many surprises but it does wire your brain to know for example that if you're saying something is good or bad you better be comparing it to something which as amazing as this sounds is not automatic thinking it's not not even common sense people will often just look at a thing and say that's good or bad without regard to what they're comparing it to which is the only relevant question so once you take economics you automatically see things as pairs it's either this or that or this or that or the third thing et cetera so that wiring just completely changes how you act all the time you can't turn it off you you could not you could not force me to not consider alternatives when i look at a question it's just automatic now suppose you've been taught to be a lawyer don't you think lawyers get a certain circuitry burned in and you know i'm not exactly sure what that circuitry is but if you look at adam schiff and you know i believe he's he's an attorney am i right correct me if i'm wrong he's an attorney right i feel like they all are so can you confirm that somebody says nope somebody says yes anyway it feels as if whether he's a real one or wanted to be one it feels as if these public hearings are attorneys who couldn't be attorneys like actually successful big trial lawyers it feels like play acting for attorneys this show trial thing that we're seeing and now it's like we've seen several of them from the democrats it looks like attorneys trying to be attorneys doesn't it it's like they're play acting they couldn't do it in the real world so so it made me think of that you know the old joke those who can't do teach right those who can't do teach and those who can't teach teach him well in the in the lawyer world it's like those who can't become you know successful lawyers teach and those who can't teach you how to be a lawyer run for politics and they're in congress so you end up with like the lowest level of a lawyer by the time you have a politician who's also a lawyer not not every time i'm making sort of a generalization but then you've got these people who are wired for this model of how to how to solve things all right i'm a lawyer so the model of how to solve things is you have some kind of this public event where evidence is is displayed and they're representatives and and there's somebody who's like a like a defendant you know like you're accusing somebody and then there'll be other people who would be like a like a jury but not really a jury because it's not a trial but we'll make it like it's a pretend trial and then all get to stand in front of the world like i'm a famous trial lawyer and i'll i'll make my impassioned case and then everybody will look at me and they'll say wow look at that impassioned case that that excellent lawyer made who was not good enough to be an actual lawyer so he had to run for office so so much of this looks like play acting because it is i think it actually is if if you put me in government what would i be doing so much that you would hate it i would be saying have you considered the alternatives have we really have we really seen both sides of the arguments like i would be doing that until you were so sick of hearing it that you would puke because i'm wired that way like i'm just wired that way because i studied economics and you know business etc if you if you randomly select a lawyer from anywhere throw that lawyer into government and say we've got this problem what do you want to do about it what's the lawyer going to do well the lawyer's going to do whatever the lawyer was wired to do huh how do you solve a problem probably some kind of a evidence gathering then a public event there's got to be a villain it's got to be a jury they're just wired that way so we keep getting all these you know impeachments and show trials and stuff why because that's who we hired we hired people who can only do this if we wanted to get some plumbing fixed we should have hired a plumber if we wanted to solve a problem you don't hire lawyers lawyers aren't there to solve a problem they're there to fight they're there to put on a trial they're just wired a certain way and they're wired the wrong way for what we need them for are you ready for the uh point where i make my case so strongly that you'll never be the same again january 6 imagine january 6 if all the lawyers were not part of the story number one it is alleged and i may have some of these facts wrong so help me on the fact-checking it is alleged that lawyer mark elias was part of a larger effort to change some of the election rules partly because the the pandemic gave some impetus to that but um more largely because they knew those rule changes would help the democrats now if if as many allege and i'm not sure how to know this is true if as many allege that made the difference wasn't that the thing that shocked republicans after the election it's like wait a minute this didn't go the way we were all pretty sure it would go and it's so far off from what we expected that we we think there's something fishy going on so if mark elias had simply never existed and the election had been run the way elections had always run before maybe unfairly maybe unfairly republicans would have had an advantage and trump would have won and then there would be no january 6.

so am i right so this is the first first case if mark elias or and people he worked with who probably did similar things if they did not exist doing what they did republicans would not have said wait a minute this result doesn't look right and maybe it was all legal by the way i'm not alleging anything illegal they're probably just good lawyers and they made sure they changed laws that helped their clients or their interests so here's another one uh apparently the primary reason that trump thought there was some path for uh delaying the vote or getting these these other fake people in there uh fake electors is uh he had a lawyer john eastman so john eastman was the one who came up with the theories about how it would be legal for trump and his supporters to delay things or challenge things or get different electors or whatever it was now imagine if trump did not have a high-end lawyer a high-end lawyer remember john eastman's not you know your neighborhood lawyer he's like a high-end government lawyer kind of guy if trump did not have that advice would he have even bothered if no lawyer had told trump yeah there's a there's an argument for this would he would he have done anything he did no no no there had to be a lawyer telling him well there's a good chance this could work now as in retrospect you know as we look at it after the fact it doesn't look like that was good legal advice but how would you know if you were in the moment if you're trump and your lawyer says this looks like it could work what are you going to do over overrule your lawyer i mean you don't know i mean eventually you might overrule so if you took mark elias and whoever he worked with probably other lawyers anavit you wouldn't get the opinion that shocked the republicans if you took eastman out of it trump would have said ah damn it i just lost the election i guess there's nothing you could do about that no by the way oh and then then if you take the lawyers and the congress they don't even do the january 6 show trial thing so have i made my case that if you took the lawyers out of the story none of this would have happened january 6 wouldn't even be there would have been no riots there would have been nothing except an election it was only the lawyers that up everything and if if it were not for their flying monkeys in the press to make us think the problem was somewhere else it would be really obvious to you that lawyers are the problem and by the way they're not always breaking the law uh how about if uh if uh sidney powell had not told the trump supporters that they totally had the goods do you think the trump supporters would have been so worked up if somebody who wasn't a high-end lawyer somebody you really expect better know they have the facts before they talk in public like that do you think they would have been as worked up probably not this was lawyer problems from top to bottom and the fact that we see it any other way is a testimony to how easily we can be brainwashed because i mean it's only one of the filters or frames you could put on this but it's the most productive one it's just a lawyer on lawyer crime and we're all we're all basically we're just victims of the drive-by shootings by lawyers and we're acting like it's some other problem entirely so um so there's that um what about this gun control bill so a lot of republicans are hopping mad i guess a number of republicans signed on to a democrat gun control bill that includes some red flag law funding so it's funding for states to look into and or implement red flag laws and that means that if you think your neighbor or friend or family member is a little crazy you can have the government take their gun away because you reported that they were somehow mentally unstable or dangerous or something now as many people have suggested uh doesn't that mean that everybody's just going to turn in every republican that lives next door and and every democrat who sees a republican who has more than one gun is going to say more than one gun that's a little crazy to me why would you need more than one gun and while you're you take pictures and put them on social media of you at the gun range oh that's a little crazy i think maybe maybe the red flag is appropriate for you so there's definitely a slippery slope it's not even slippery it's like right there you don't even have to wait for the slide do you literally on day one your neighbor can turn you in for being a little too republican with your guns am i wrong i i would i would think that being a little too republican is going to start looking like a mental disorder did we not see the uh the mental disorder industry trump in public when that's the last thing anybody should do if they're in that business like the last thing you should do is diagnose somebody's mental disorder and they're not even your patient it's just somebody you see on tv and and these psychi psychiatric industry like just completely gave up their standard because it was trump it's like oh yeah well in this case we'll do it yeah normal normally normally we wouldn't do it but you know trump so when you see how flexible people can be under the right situation yeah the i there's a legitimate reason to be worried about these red flag laws on the other hand what do i always say when there's something that you don't know if it would work or not what do i always say test it test it why are we even arguing just put it in one damn state let it run for three years and see if any republicans get turned in i think you would know pretty pretty reliably if it turns out that democrats are just going to be turning in republicans if you think that's the problem and i think that's an entirely legitimate worry you just don't know if it's true like you worry because you don't know right it could work it could be exactly the opposite of that here's the other way it could go the democrat calls and says i need to red flag my neighbor because he's he's like a little too gun obsessed but maybe he's just a republican with a hobby right it doesn't mean anything about violence what happens when the police get that call do they act on it because now there's a red flag law or do they say um does your does your neighbor have a red hat that says mega on it and then the democrat says yes and then the do the police say oh we'll put somebody right on it or the police say don't worry that's just how they act i feel like it might be the latter because the police are just going to want to use their resources for things that are useful right the police do not want to waste their time so the counter to the slippery slope is that the police will hardly ever want to do anything with the red flag i think you'd be i think it would be shockingly difficult to get the police to act at all on a red flag complaint it would have to be pretty damning for the police act only because the police have limited resources so do you remember i said follow the money do you know why i always speed if i happen to be driving at 4 00 a.m on a sunday morning well let's say not for him let's say 8 a.m on a sunday morning do you know why i always speed well not only because there's not much traffic but because i know the police department will not implement resources for a low traffic time of day follow the money if you know how money influences how everybody acts you'll never get a speeding ticket i i realize that's a dramatic claim but let me give you another example do you ever see those signs that the police will put up to tell you what your speed is and the idea is to tell you that you're speeding so you'll slow down do you know what i do when i see that sign i speed do you know why because no police department in the world is going to put up that sign to warn you to slow down and then also assign an officer to give you a ticket if you didn't follow the sign the side is what you put there when you can't afford to put an officer there all the time if you don't understand economics you might think oh there's going to be a police right after the sign no no the the signs instead of the police somebody says wrong but i bet it's not wrong often so the point is if you understand economics uh you can anticipate things a little bit better tim pool was swatted eight times and the police keep coming yeah that tim pool thing there's something we need to know about that there's something about that story that doesn't make complete sense i'm having a little trouble believing he gets wanted time after time you know and it's a fake call and that the swat falls for it one time after another really there's nobody on a swat team who's heard of tim pool at this point it'd be hard for me to imagine any swat organization where there isn't at least one person who knows who the tim poole is and that he gets swatted all the time on fake calls i don't know i'm just not believing there's something about the story that doesn't add up but um i was so i'd say you have two counterforces that could be tested one is of course people would abuse the red flag law of course they would because we're people people will use anything there's nothing that can be introduced into the world that people won't abuse so yes they'll abuse it but will the police resource constraint cause the police to be like a really useful check on this but they won't act unless it's like really obvious and when it's really obvious maybe they should act right so i'm not sure the only thing i know for sure is that you could test it in one state wait a couple years if it worked then you don't give up your constitutional rights without getting something in return alex brogan on twitter uh did a thread with a bunch of good ideas about persuasion but there was one that he had there that i'm going to push back a little bit on because i have a counterfeit so here's a persuasion tip of the day so what alex wrote was i called it the rule of three i think this came from mckinsey or someplace that whenever you're trying to persuade a person to do something always present three reasons never two never four but exactly three and the idea is it gets people's attention and most of us have been hired wired to expect things in groups of three so it's more persuasive and i can see the argument that maybe there's some hard wiring that three reasons is just the right amount but i would push back on that because my experience is if you give people three reasons the argument goes like this and see if this sounds familiar i'll say well there are three reasons reason number one it would kill you reason number two it would be expensive reason number three it's not even doable it's impractical now if you give three reasons people will you know start arguing with you know parts of those categories and you'll never you'll never get them to nail to agree because the moment you you argue the first one and they say no it's not going to kill you and then you do your argument and they agree or or they don't agree they usually get to the point where they say but what about that other one and you're like wait a minute wait a minute are you conceding this point and they'll never concede the point they'll just move to the other point then you say okay okay we'll get back to this one because i think i won this but you didn't agree so let me let me win these other two and then you then you make your great point on the second one what did they do they say oh now you've made two good points let's see about this third one never never they'll just move to the third one and start arguing why you're wrong about that one and you'll be like well i'm not so sure i've settled the first two did i and then you argue the third one and you make your point and now in your mind you've said all right three arguments i've now supported all three arguments we're done here what does the person who has now been completely vanquished on all three points do next you tell me in your own experience you've gone down the list of three you've completely vanquished their points in ways that they don't even have a response to they literally don't have a response to it they just move to the next what happens next they return to the first one and start over that's right name here that is correct they start over and they will pretend that you had never already countered their first argument they'll just start back on the first one and you'll be you'll you'll think all right do you have amnesia we just did this and they'll act like you hadn't and so you'll think okay well i'll do it again and then you'll do the same three again and you'll say there if you at least you remember all three debunks so now we're done and what will they do they'll start with the first one again like it never happened now you've seen this right i'm not the only person who's gone through this you know i call it the the well you keep going down the well and there's no bottom anyway so i would argue that you should take their strongest argument and debunk it and then say boom if your strongest argument fell apart yeah do we we don't really need to talk about the other ones because i'm not i'm not going to let you escape to them because i know you'll escape so the first thing you want to do is destroy their escape paths right now you have to be a deadly debater to do this but if you're sure you're going to win on the strongest point make sure you've you know eliminated all their escape paths before you annihilate their first one by getting them to agree how about i just take your strongest point and if i if i can debunk your strongest point would you agree to maybe rethink your the rest of it we don't have to do it today but just your strongest point because if you do that that that gets rid of their escape has you say yeah yeah yeah but i just today let's we'll just talk about the strongest point and now that you see you were wrong about that maybe you should do a little research that's about as far as you can go people can talk themselves into things better than you can talk them into it so if you sort of point them in the right direction sometimes they'll walk there on their own all right i believe i feel like there was at least one thing that i didn't mention today looking at my notes looking at my notes nope that was it i guess this is complete i believe that once again your lives have been improved by the time that we spent here together um and how many of you just got smarter three three of you but i'll get the rest of you next time i can't win them all desantis is pushing back on baby vaccines yeah i've heard some weird things on the baby vaccine story like the weirdest one was i can't believe this is right like there there's something about the vaccine companies don't have liability unless it includes kids unless kids are part of the program or something did somebody hear that like that doesn't sound right i mean that that doesn't sound true i mean just on the surface that doesn't sound true scott stop with the self-importance i've been advised to stop with my self-importance michael i'm going to hide you on this channel because you're less important than me goodbye i would advise all of you to ramp up your self-importance anybody who advises you to think of yourself as less important you really need to remove them from your life immediately immediately remove them for your life so if you'd like to talk to me about how i'm feeling too good about my abilities that's great just don't do it around me i just don't have any interest in you and i would advise you to maybe think better of yourself i don't know which would make you happier i'm no doctor but i'll bet you that if you learn to think well of yourself you'll be happier i think i think did i miss uh jordan peterson tweet discussion oh is there a spicy jordan peterson tweet that i missed can somebody fill me in what did jordan peterson say that oh he did he say that all right we'll see if there's a jordan peterson thing i need to respond to uh ask schallenberger about biden's oil lies yeah michael schellenberger does the best job of putting things in context especially for energy questions and homeless stuff but yeah he's been calling out biden for for his claims about uh refineries so was there a jordan peterson tweet the one with gad's ad should i look it up it's like you're not gonna tell me well maybe i'll do that for tomorrow i won't keep you all right that's all for today i will talk to you tomorrow and i'm hoping that all of you have an amazing peterson said you weren't important what's that say peterson said you weren't important or that people weren't important is that what he said all right well we'll figure out what he said and on that note i'm apparently babbling even though this is still the best experience that most of you have ever had in your life and some of you are going to have an even better experience later today i don't know who you are but probably probably because that's how it works um yes an amazing day coming and i'll talk to you tomorrow youtube bye for now

everybody

and welcome to

the highlight of not only your life and

my life but civilization itself

something like

13.9

billion years have

passed since the big bang

and all of that leading to this moment

think about it

if things had been just a little bit

different

you wouldn't even be here

and then i would be talking to i don't

know what dinosaur anything could have

happened

but if we want to take it up to a less

absurd level today and

probably do all you need is a copper

mugler glass tanker chalice or stein a

canteen jogger flask a vessel of any

kind

fill it with your favorite liquid

i like coffee

and join me now for the unparalleled

pleasure

the dopamine hit of the day

the thing that makes

everything better

it's called the simultaneous sip

has anybody ever done it before

anybody anybody yes of course you have

it's the best thing that's ever happened

to you go

oh

i tried to get all of my senses involved

you got the touch the smell the taste

i sort of listened to myself slurping a

little bit there

i looked at it yeah everything

that's what you call a full body

experience

and

i think we just

had it together

not that there's anything wrong with

that

now

i have a question for you

how do you plan a

vacation

in the current environment

is anybody having that problem

you think to yourself you know a

few few weeks from now or whatever a few

months

i think i'll book myself a

a plane trip

and i'll take myself a

trip you don't know if masks are coming

back which would you know ruin a trip

and you don't even know if you'll have

an airplane

because the the flights are so bad right

now the number of cancellations that you

can't be entirely sure

that if you book a flight it'll actually

happen now that was always the case that

you couldn't be entirely sure

but i feel like it went from a

you know a 95

odds in your favor

too closer to

what

65 percent i'm not i don't even know

what the odds are of missing your flight

these days or at least being a day late

or something like that

i mean i don't know how you plan a plan

to do anything these days

anyway

get your flight insurance or something

because if you plan a big vacation you

don't want to blow it

you

don't all right uh i saw the best

suggestion i've seen from uh a tweet by

david boxenhorn

and he's he's helping us out with this

whole pronoun stuff and i was saying

that

what we need is some pronouns that

everybody can agree on that aren't being

used for something else

you know don't use they because that's

sort of already being used for something

else

so david suggests that since there are

all these different pronouns you get

yours you know he she they that if you

just took the first letter

from the pronouns that are out there you

could create you know your own sort of

universal one

so let's see what we'd get if you just

took the first letter of the solution

she

he

it

and they

now that would be an s and h and i oh

wait

all right so it wasn't the best idea in

the world but

i like where it's heading generally

speaking maybe you need to arrange the

letters a little differently

now somebody mentioned that

this had already been done with the

letter z

like calling calling people z

you know instead of he or she

yes he did that

and i said to myself um

almost there

i mean i can see what you're doing there

it's a brand new word

so that's good right

but here's what i suggested

could we

have a word that sounds less like a nazi

invasion

that's all

you know it just

i'm not asking a lot i want i'd like a a

pronoun that's not being used for a

completely different purpose already

is clear i mean i'm not asking a lot

doesn't make you sound like a nazi storm

trooper

is that is that a high bar

i mean i didn't think it was

but nobody's crossed it yet

so

let's see if somebody can do that

now as you know reality and parody

merged sometime in the 2021 period i

think would be when historians will call

it

and that's a period where

you really can't tell the difference

between a joke

and something serious

because

the serious stuff became so ridiculous

that the jokes you stayed where they

were and then they just merged

you want another example of that

does it does that sound like hyperbole

does it sound

ridiculous that parody and reality have

merged to the point where you just can't

tell the difference

well here's a little story from today

apparently

the atlantic magazine this this is fake

news so somebody did a fake headline

that made it seem as if the atlantic

magazine had done it

and the fake headline was the heroism of

biden's bike fall and then the subtitle

was

the president gracefully illustrated an

important lesson for all americans when

we fall we must get back up

now

now how many of you thought that

probably was a real headline in a real

in this magazine

i'll bet you

well over 90 of the people who saw it

probably thought it was real wouldn't

you say you know before you knew it was

a fake

wouldn't you say that that sounds real

it actually does

because as absurd as it sounds it's not

more absurd

than than the news that you'll see today

somewhere there will be more absurd

things in the real news today

no difference

well

as part of our understanding

of why

things aren't the way they they used to

be

uh adam dopamine on twitter

adam md

he points out that eisenhower missed one

key element when he warned us about the

military-industrial complex

so remember eisenhower gave a big speech

in his day

and said watch out for the

the people who make the weapons

working with the people in government

to make money by starting wars

essentially

and sure enough it looks like there's

some of that going on

but the part the left hand as adam

dopamine points out

is you should include the news in that

it should have been the military

news complex

because unless the news is complicit

you can't get away with it

so you really need that whole complex

and i think that's sort of a

useful uh

useful useful foundational understanding

you know follow the money

but there's somebody running cover for

the money

and diverting you

so there's somebody on the uh let's say

the

the bank heist team

whose job it is when the bad guys run

out and turn left

and the police arrive it's his job to

say he went that way and point the wrong

direction

and when i say he

i mean

all right

um what do these

people have in common

let's see if you can get this in the

comments here's your quiz three people

what do they have in common alex jones

adam schiff

and kim kardashian

go

what do they have in common

something major you know

and it's not you know not the funny

stuff something real

dog punchers that was a good guess

but we have no information

uh about alex jones ever punching a dog

so that was a good guess somebody said

they're all dog punchers

and i thought kim kardashian probably

adam schiff definitely

but no information about alex jones he

might be a dog lover so it was a good

guess but i don't think it fits

uh all had sex tapes that's a that's a

good guess

yeah um

[Music]

probably

probably but that's not where that's not

what i was going for all have dated p

davidson

checking the list yeah

that too

well okay i didn't realize there were

that many coincidences

there are quite a few of them but here's

what i was going for

i was going for they're all in the same

line of work

they're all in the same line of work

let me read them again

alex jones adam schiff and kim

kardashian same job

you know different bosses same job

and here's what their job is

it's an attenuated reality

attenuated reality

they start with something that's like

reality-ish

but they create something that's not

reality from it

for the purpose of getting attention

and then they can monetize that

attention or turn it into power in the

case of adam schiff maybe also monetize

so

none of them are different in my view

from

wrestling

when you were a kid did you ever watch

wrestling and you thought to yourself

people are saying this is fake but i'm

not so sure

this wrestling looks real to me i think

they're really fighting

and then later you learn it's an

attenuated reality

it's not reality

it's sort of a base reality there's a

you know fighters and there's a ring and

there's an audience and

and people probably get hurt and there's

contact and but it's attenuated

to get your attention it's more

interesting

alex jones

is an attenuated reality

he takes things that are at base are

true

but

adds to it you could call it a theater

theater would be exactly the right yeah

thank you

um

sean

and

and is it a coincidence that

adam schiff actually had some

script writing ambitions i think he's

written a few scripts so he actually has

a theatrical

background

and

kim kardashian

there was a recently a story

that there was some family meeting or

something

that was in the reality show

but the complaint was that they scripted

it and you know it was an artificial

gathering in which they pretended

something was real

to which i said

you just figured that out

is there somebody who watches reality

shows and thinks they're actually

watching just them just filming what's

happening

is there anybody doing that

is there anybody who still thinks

wrestling

is like a real sport

i i wonder do people think that when you

watch alex jones

do you believe that the purpose is that

you're seeing reality

is that is that what you think you're

watching

because you should watch alex jones

the kardashians

and even adam schiff doing any of his

public stuff as the same it's the same

thing

they start with reality they attenuate

it in ways they get your attention for

their own purposes

but to imagine that any of that is real

is a

is a serious misunderstanding of

i won't call it parody in reality

but if you think that attenuated reality

and reality you can treat them the same

i think you should rethink that

these are obviously attenuated reality

situations

and uh there's a new documentary or a

movie i guess you'd say coming out about

alex jones i think at the end of july

so we'll talk more about that but i was

looking at uh i just looked at a little

trailer for that

and you see just a snippet of alex jones

defending

what he does now his defense is this

that he believes what he says

to be true

and that sometimes he's wrong

and i look at that and i think

maybe

maybe

like you can't really rule that out can

you

i mean think about it think about how

easy a target alex jones is and then i'm

going to give you his defense it's

really simple it's a very simple defense

he believes what he says

but sometimes he's wrong

and i hear that and i think

all right nobody has ever presented

evidence that he doesn't believe what he

says

am i wrong

and then here's the second part

here here's the mic drop

alex jones asks us

why we treat him differently than the

new york times

which also presumably believes what it

says but sometimes they're wrong

like weapons of mass destruction in iraq

like really wrong

like like wrong start a war wrong

like that's as wrong as you can be

and alex jones says why would you treat

me differently

we both believed what we said

and we both could be wrong

to which i say

oh that's actually a complete

defense

there's nothing wrong with that defense

at all the only way the only way he

could be

thwarted in that defense is if there's

some recording of him saying

you know i make all this stuff up

now apparently there is some evidence

that he likes the conspiracy theory

domain so that part i think he said

directly i believe that's you know also

part of the trailer

but

that doesn't mean he doesn't believe it

and

i'm not entirely sure that believing

things is a real thing anymore

i feel as if we all choose things to

believe

and that

um

the reality is now

so obviously subjective

that we're a little bit aware of the

fact that we're just choosing a reality

does that does that feel true

in a little in a small way

but you can see that this is like a

trend you know like it's a socially

expanding trend

that people understand that what they

believe or what they act on as their

reality

they know is a selected reality a

decision reality not an actual reality

it's just one they choose to live in

and i think that conspiracy theorists

um

often

are making almost a lifestyle choice

to say

i'm gonna live in a world in which i

treat this as true

it's just a choice

and on some level maybe they know it

isn't true

because did you ever see somebody who

had a religion that wasn't yours

and you talked to him you're like i

don't know what's going on with this

other person

so whatever your religion is is probably

the real one

but suppose you're talking to somebody

who got it all wrong they had the wrong

religion and you look at them and you

think but do they actually believe that

like actually you really really believe

that like if you

if you put a

a gun to the head of you know a loved

one in their family and said i'm gonna

kill your loved one

you know i have some way to know the

truth

it's not possible but i have some way to

know what you're really thinking do you

really believe your own religion like

all of it

like like all the important parts you do

you believe all of that

and i think you'd find that people say

well

okay i mean if it's the life of my loved

one is on the line it is sort of a

chosen

belief

and

uh while many of you are still saying no

that's not true with me i'm actually

living in reality and

living in the real world and maybe you

are

maybe you are how would i know

the only thing i'm sure is i don't know

uh but maybe you got the right one

speaking of reality

here's what here's why

you could say with certainty we have no

news

industry in this country

the most basic fact

that you would want to know as a news

consumer

is this so biden recently said i think

yesterday uh

we need more refining capacity

and he says this idea

they don't have oil and

and

they don't have oil to drill and to

bring up is simply not true

so basically biden is saying that the

oil industry is to blame for any

shortages

because there's plenty of oil with the

leases and the

drilling capacity they already have

they just they can't refine it

and so that's a problem with the

industry itself having not built enough

refineries

now

wouldn't you expect if you had a news

industry

they would fact check all that and then

put it in context for you and then you

would read it

and it wouldn't matter if you were

reading

news from the left or the right

because these are just really objective

facts

is it true

that the industry just didn't build

enough refineries

and there's nothing stopping them

so if they did

everything would be fixed

does that does that even feel a little

bit true

i don't know what the true story is

so here's here things i've heard

unreliably

but also assumed to be true

i believe the government is the problem

with building refineries isn't it

isn't the problem that the government

either it's either state or local or

federal or regulations of some types

but

uh did i not hear a quote and give me a

fact check on this so i'm operating from

faulty memory here i think this week

the ceo of chevron this is the part you

need to check

said that he believes there will never

be a refinery built in this country

again

did he say that

the ceo said he doesn't believe it'll

ever happen

because the

and i assume that the context was the

regulatory burden is too hard

am i right

yeah

it's just impossible for regulatory

reasons

so

why not put it in central america

[Laughter]

can't everybody win if we put the

refineries in central america there's

got to be some you know are you telling

me that nicaragua

you know nicaragua was going to say no

to a refinery

with all the you know jobs and whatever

positivity it could create there

and they probably have lower you know

regulatory burdens

so couldn't uh couldn't kamala solve her

problem and the ceo chevron can solve

his problem

and basically

work as a you know as a system

try to figure out how to make all that

work as as one thing

so one of the big problems

and you see this all the time is we

treat all of our

issues like they're little silos

but sometimes you could just connect two

problems

yeah for example you've got a labor

shortage

and you know this that's the economy and

you've got an immigration problem

can't we figure out how those two silos

could work together to

fix something

it feel feels like we're we're

handicapping ourselves

by thinking all of our issues are like

in their own little channel

anyway

so it's obvious we we have no news

industry

because i can't tell

if biden is telling the truth

that the industry is to blame

or the industry is telling the truth

that the government is to blame and i

would think that both the news on the

left and the right if they knew the

answer

would report it exactly the same

oh yeah they'd love to build a refinery

but the government's too burdensome or

not

whatever it is

so i was watching the new press

secretary

biden's press secretary trying to answer

a question about you know the economy

and

her she attempted to answer it by saying

there's a bunch of stuff that isn't that

bad right now

which is true

so it's not all bad we're not in the

recession now blah blah but my overall

impression of her was she didn't seem

qualified for the job

does anybody else have that

feeling

she seems unqualified for the job now

i couldn't remember her name

is it

jean-pierre is that her name

what is her actually name so i'm at

least being respectful when i'm talking

about her

because i feel somewhat disrespectful i

couldn't remember her name

uh

all right well look

uh karine jean-pierre

karen karine

but i'm going to put a positive spin on

it

do you remember when

conan o'brien first became a late show

host

and he would do his monologue

and i don't know if he had the same

reaction i did but

my first reaction to conan and bro brian

was

oh god he makes me nervous

because he looks like he's not qualified

or he knows he's not qualified or

he just seemed so uncomfortable

in his own skin

on stage that it made me uncomfortable

but

but

then he got better

because it's one of those things you

can't really practice

yeah there's no other there's no way to

practice being a late night show

monologue guy because it's not real

practice so

and then i would argue that he became

you know one of the best at it

because he got to practice i feel as if

she could she could follow the same arc

but at the moment the

spokesperson is looking a little too

uncomfortable with what she's saying

and you do not want your spokesperson

to look uncomfortable

with what uh he or she or are

saying

so

anyway i was just wanted to do do you

have the same impression that she seems

to lack confidence in her own answers

and that lack of confidence is then

makes you think maybe the administration

doesn't know what it's doing

it's a bad it's a bad combination to

have somebody who looks

uncomfortable in their job talking for

you

anyway

but

um on a positive note

if i

may be positive

she looks like she's smart

she looks like she has you know basic

you know great capabilities so maybe

maybe she becomes really good at this in

a month you never know could happen

give her a month to see what happens

so biden administration wants to

ban

or

greatly reduce nicotine in cigarettes

and

basically throw the whole cigarette

industry into a

into a tizzy and make it easier for

people to quit

so apparently

at least there's some science of course

the industry disputes it surprised

to suggest that it would get people to

quit

what do you think of that

now

i've been an anti-smoking

proponent and even

public advocate

for decades

in public places

but i'm much less interested in what

people do in their private lives

so do you think the

government should get into this business

what do you think

i mean i do believe

that this is likely to be something that

would save

tens of millions of lives in the long

run

that would be my guess

if they get away with this

and i'll say it that way if they

actually

basically wipe out the cigarette

industry and make it less addictive

i feel like it would save tens and

millions of lives

which doesn't mean you should do it

somebody says it's like prohibition yeah

so would there be immediately

counterfeit cigarettes seems like it

right yeah it would just become an

illegal industry and we would just get

them from

the cartel like we get everything else

yeah i don't know if it would work

so i guess uh

i'm anti-smoking but i'm pro-freedom

so

ah this one's a tough one

because cigarette smoking

mostly hurts yourself

but on the other hand it

might make my i don't know my health

insurance cost more because other people

are doing the wrong things i guess but

you can't really go down that road

either

because that's you know an infinite

problem because everybody's doing stuff

that's dangerous you can't take account

into account all of it

all right i'm going to defend ivanka

trump's opinion about january 6 here

because it turns out it's pretty close

to my own

so

uh cnn is trying to point out that in

one video

ivanka said she accepted barra's opinion

that the election was fair

and

in other videos

where she was not

you know being asked by i think the

committee

she had said separately and earlier

that you know there were there were

things that needed to be looked into

in the election

meaning that

maybe there's some

some questions

this should be answered about the

election

now that's pretty different from saying

that election was rigged

and do you think that those two things

are

necessarily incompatible

here here's my take i'll overlay my

opinion and maybe that's unfair

but

uh i feel like hers is so close to mine

that

i can do this

so i'm going to defend my own opinion

i separate

the question of whether the election was

fair

from the question of whether you should

support the system

because i often think maybe always but

i'll say often

that protecting the system is going to

be a higher priority

uh

than maybe fixing any individual outcome

i just think the system's more important

so as soon as the system

elected biden i like many people said

huh

i don't know

maybe

maybe not

maybe maybe not

so i had my questions

many people had questions but some of

you will remember that i also

immediately congratulated him on twitter

and have never backed off from my

decision

that the system

elected biden

so when i say congratulation biden i'm

saying okay

i got some questions

but i'm not gonna dismantle the system

you're gonna have to give me a lot

better

a lot better evidence

before i'm gonna like break the system

because that's like the

backbone of the country

so i also have an assumption this is

part of the context for my opinion

that probably elections have been rigged

in this country

for hundreds of years

yeah maybe in small ways maybe in big

ways maybe it made a difference such as

the kennedy election

uh maybe it made a difference in you

know johnson's political life

maybe not i don't know

i wouldn't know

but

in all of those cases i would still

support you know the republic and the

voting system

so i believe that ivanka is saying

something at least consistent with what

i'm saying i won't i won't burden her

by saying that her opinion matches mine

but at least it's consistent

yet which is that when barr said

the election is fair

he couldn't know

if there was any unknown fraud

right

i mean by definition

you don't know the thing you don't know

so if there had been problems and nobody

knew what they were

how would barr know that

how would anybody so barr couldn't know

what he can now

so when barr says the election is fair

here's how i interpret it

the system

elected biden which is what i say

yeah the system did what the system did

we observed it

it might have had problems

but i'm going to support the system

until you give me really really good

evidence really good evidence and we're

going to talk about that in a minute

that there's something wrong

right and in my opinion i haven't seen

it yet

i could

i mean it's possible and i'm not sure

it's possible to audit the full system

i'm pretty sure it isn't

so i would say ivanka is on good

territory if she says she accepts the

you know the bar interpretation that the

election was fair

i interpret that just meaning that it

happened it there was an election we

observed an election it picked a it

picked a winner

so

yes that happened

um but then you should also look into it

if you've got questions that just seems

like common sense you know the system is

is better

the system is healthier

if you look into any allegations

because then you can keep making sure

that you're finding anything that's a

problem

i've got a theory that maybe a lawyer

should not be allowed to run for office

and it's a very it's based on a very

obvious and simple concept

people do what they're trained to do

that's why training works

it it wires your brain to think in a

certain way the the benefit

of learning economics

actually has very little to do with

economics

i don't know if i've ever told you that

before but the benefit of learning

economics is it it wires your brain

to simply view things a certain way

that's productive

that has nothing to do with the economy

in many cases

if you if you took economics so you

could predict the future

well good luck with that

and nobody can do that

all the economics of the world isn't

going to tell you what's going to happen

next year too many surprises

but it does wire your brain to know for

example that if you're saying something

is good or bad

you better be comparing it to something

which as amazing as this sounds is not

automatic thinking it's not not even

common sense

people will often just look at a thing

and say that's good or bad

without regard to what they're comparing

it to which is the only relevant

question

so once you take economics

you automatically see things as pairs

it's either this or that or this or that

or the third thing et cetera

so that wiring just completely changes

how you act all the time you can't turn

it off

you you could not you could not force me

to not consider alternatives when i look

at a question it's just automatic

now suppose you've been taught to be a

lawyer

don't you think lawyers get a certain

circuitry burned in

and

you know i'm not exactly sure what that

circuitry is

but if you look at adam schiff

and

you know i believe he's he's an attorney

am i right

correct me if i'm wrong he's an attorney

right i feel like they all are so

can you confirm that somebody says nope

somebody says yes

anyway it feels as if whether he's a

real one or wanted to be one

it feels as if these public hearings are

attorneys who couldn't be attorneys

like actually successful big trial

lawyers it feels like play acting for

attorneys

this show trial thing that we're seeing

and now it's like we've seen several of

them from the democrats it looks like

attorneys

trying to be attorneys

doesn't it

it's like they're play acting

they couldn't do it in the real world so

so it made me think of that you know the

old joke

those who can't do teach

right those who can't do teach and those

who can't teach teach him

well

in the in the lawyer world it's like

those who can't become you know

successful lawyers

teach

and those who can't teach you how to be

a lawyer

run for politics

and they're in congress so you end up

with like the lowest level of a lawyer

by the time you have a politician who's

also a lawyer

not not every time i'm making sort of a

generalization but then you've got these

people who are wired for this model of

how to how to solve things

all right i'm a lawyer

so the model of how to solve things is

you have some kind of this public event

where evidence is is displayed and

they're

representatives and and there's somebody

who's like a like a defendant you know

like you're accusing somebody and then

there'll be other people who would be

like a like a jury but not really a jury

because it's not a trial but we'll make

it like it's a pretend trial and then

all get to stand in front of the world

like

i'm a famous trial lawyer and i'll i'll

make my impassioned case

and then everybody will look at me and

they'll say wow

look at that impassioned case

that that excellent lawyer made who was

not good enough to be an actual lawyer

so he had to run for office

so

so much of this looks like play acting

because it is

i think it actually is

if if you put me in government what

would i be doing so much that you would

hate it

i would be saying have you considered

the alternatives have we really have we

really seen both sides of the arguments

like i would be doing that until you

were so

sick of hearing it

that you would puke

because i'm wired that way like i'm just

wired that way

because i studied economics and you know

business etc

if you if you randomly select a lawyer

from anywhere

throw that lawyer into government and

say we've got this problem what do you

want to do about it what's the lawyer

going to do

well the lawyer's going to do whatever

the lawyer was wired to do

huh how do you solve a problem

probably some kind of a

evidence gathering then a public event

there's got to be a villain

it's got to be a jury

they're just wired that way

so we keep getting all these you know

impeachments and show trials and stuff

why

because that's who we hired

we hired people who can only do this

if we wanted to get some plumbing fixed

we should have hired a plumber

if we wanted to solve a problem

you don't hire lawyers

lawyers aren't there to solve a problem

they're there to fight

they're there to put on a trial

they're just wired a certain way

and they're wired the wrong way

for what we need them for

are you ready for the uh point where i

make my case so strongly that you'll

never be the same again

january 6

imagine january 6 if all the lawyers

were not part of the story number one

it is alleged and i may have some of

these facts wrong so help me on the

fact-checking

it is alleged that lawyer mark elias

was part of a larger effort to change

some of the election rules

partly because the the pandemic gave

some impetus to that but um

more largely because they knew those

rule changes would help the democrats

now if

if as many allege and i'm not sure how

to know this is true if as many allege

that made the difference

wasn't that the thing that shocked

republicans after the election it's like

wait a minute this didn't go the way we

were all pretty sure it would go

and it's so far off

from what we expected

that we we think there's something fishy

going on

so if mark elias had simply never

existed

and the election had been run the way

elections had always run before

maybe unfairly

maybe unfairly

republicans would have had an advantage

and trump would have won and then there

would be no january 6. so am i right so

this is the first first case if mark

elias or and people he worked with who

probably did similar things if they did

not exist doing what they did

republicans would not have said wait a

minute this result doesn't look right

and maybe it was all legal by the way

i'm not alleging anything illegal

they're probably just good lawyers and

they made sure they changed laws that

helped their clients

or their interests so here's another one

uh apparently the primary reason that

trump

thought there was some path for

uh delaying the vote or getting these

these other fake people in there

uh

fake electors

is

uh he had a lawyer john eastman

so john eastman was the one who came up

with the theories about how it would be

legal

for trump and his supporters to delay

things or challenge things or get

different electors or whatever it was

now imagine

if trump did not have a high-end lawyer

a high-end lawyer remember john

eastman's not

you know your neighborhood lawyer he's

like a high-end government lawyer kind

of guy if trump did not have that advice

would he have even bothered

if no lawyer had told trump yeah there's

a there's an argument for this would he

would he have done anything he did

no

no

no there had to be a lawyer telling him

well there's a good chance this could

work

now as in retrospect you know as we look

at it after the fact

it doesn't look like that was good legal

advice

but how would you know if you were in

the moment

if you're trump

and your lawyer says this looks like it

could work

what are you going to do over overrule

your lawyer i mean you don't know

i mean eventually you might overrule

so if you took

mark elias and whoever he worked with

probably other lawyers anavit you

wouldn't get the opinion that shocked

the republicans if you took eastman out

of it trump would have said ah damn it i

just lost the election i guess there's

nothing you could do about that

no by the way

oh and then then if you take the lawyers

and the congress

they don't even do the january 6 show

trial thing

so have i made my case

that if you took the lawyers out of the

story none of this would have happened

january 6 wouldn't even be there would

have been no

riots

there would have been nothing except an

election

it was only the lawyers that up

everything

and if

if it were not for their flying monkeys

in the press

to make us think the problem was

somewhere else it would be really

obvious to you that lawyers are the

problem

and by the way they're not always

breaking the law

uh how about if uh

if uh sidney powell

had not told the trump supporters

that they totally had the goods

do you think the trump supporters would

have been so worked up

if somebody who wasn't a high-end lawyer

somebody you really expect

better know they have the facts before

they talk in public like that

do you think they would have been as

worked up

probably not

this was lawyer problems from top to

bottom

and the fact that we see it any other

way

is a testimony to how easily we can be

brainwashed

because i mean it's only one of the

filters or frames you could put on this

but it's the most productive one

it's just a lawyer on lawyer crime

and we're all we're all

basically we're just victims of the

drive-by shootings by lawyers

and we're acting like it's some other

problem entirely

so

um

so there's that

um what about this

gun control

bill so

a lot of republicans are hopping mad

i guess a number of republicans signed

on to a democrat

gun control bill that includes some red

flag

law funding

so it's funding for states to look into

and or implement red flag laws and that

means that if you think your neighbor or

friend or family member is a little

crazy

you can have the government take their

gun away

because you reported that they were

somehow mentally unstable or dangerous

or something now

as many people have suggested

uh doesn't that mean that everybody's

just going to turn in every republican

that lives next door and and every

democrat who sees a republican who has

more than one gun

is going to say

more than one gun

that's a little crazy to me

why would you need more than one gun

and while you're you take pictures and

put them on social media of you at the

gun range oh that's a little crazy

i think maybe maybe the red flag

is appropriate for you

so

there's definitely a slippery slope

it's not even slippery it's like right

there you don't even have to wait for

the slide do you

literally on day one

your neighbor can turn you in for being

a little too republican with your guns

am i wrong

i i would i would think that being a

little too republican is going to start

looking like a mental disorder

did we not see the uh the mental

disorder

industry

trump in public

when that's the last thing anybody

should do if they're in that business

like the last thing you should do is

diagnose somebody's mental disorder and

they're not even your patient it's just

somebody you see on tv and and these

psychi psychiatric

industry like just completely gave up

their standard because it was trump it's

like oh yeah well in this case we'll do

it yeah normal normally normally we

wouldn't do it but you know trump

so

when you see how flexible

people can be

under the right situation

yeah the i there's a legitimate reason

to be worried about these red flag laws

on the other hand

what do i always say

when there's something that

you don't know if it would work

or not

what do i always say

test it

test it

why are we even arguing

just put it in one damn state

let it run for three years

and see if any republicans get turned in

i think you would know pretty

pretty reliably

if it turns out that democrats are just

going to be turning in republicans

if you think that's the problem

and i think that's an entirely

legitimate

worry

you just don't know if it's true

like you worry because you don't know

right

it could work it could be exactly the

opposite of that

here's the other way it could go

the democrat calls and says i need to

red flag my neighbor

because he's he's like a little too gun

obsessed

but maybe he's just a republican with a

hobby right it doesn't mean anything

about violence

what happens when the police get that

call do they act on it because now

there's a red flag law

or do they say

um

does your does your neighbor have a red

hat that says mega on it

and then the democrat says

yes and then the do the police say oh

we'll put somebody right on it

or the police say

don't worry that's just how they act

i feel like it might be the latter

because the police are just going to

want to use their resources for things

that are useful right

the police do not want to waste their

time

so the counter to the slippery slope

is that the police will hardly ever want

to do anything with the red flag

i think you'd be

i think it would be shockingly difficult

to get the police to act at all

on a red flag complaint

it would have to be pretty damning

for the police act only because the

police have limited resources

so

do you remember i said follow the money

do you know why i always speed

if i happen to be driving at 4 00 a.m on

a sunday morning

well let's say not for him

let's say 8 a.m on a sunday morning do

you know why i always speed

well not only because there's not much

traffic

but because i know the police department

will not implement resources

for a low traffic time of day

follow the money

if you know how money influences how

everybody acts

you'll never get a speeding ticket

i i realize that's a dramatic claim but

let me give you another example do you

ever see those signs that the police

will put up to tell you what your speed

is

and the idea is to tell you that you're

speeding so you'll slow down

do you know what i do when i see that

sign i speed

do you know why

because no police department in the

world is going to put up that sign

to warn you to slow down and then also

assign an officer to give you a ticket

if you didn't follow the sign

the side is what you put there when you

can't afford to put an officer there

all the time

if you don't understand economics

you might think oh there's going to be a

police right after the sign

no

no the the signs instead of the police

somebody says wrong but i bet it's not

wrong often

so the point is

if you understand economics uh you can

anticipate things a little bit better

tim pool was swatted eight times and the

police keep coming yeah that tim pool

thing there's something we need to know

about that

there's something about that story that

doesn't make complete sense

i'm having a little trouble believing he

gets wanted time after time you know and

it's a

fake call and that

the swat falls for it one time after

another

really there's nobody on a swat team

who's heard of tim pool

at this point it'd be hard for me to

imagine

any swat organization

where there isn't at least one person

who knows who the tim poole is and

that he gets swatted

all the time on fake calls

i don't know i'm just not believing

there's something about the story that

doesn't add up

but um i was so i'd say you have two

counterforces that could be tested one

is of course people would abuse the red

flag law of course they would because

we're people

people will use anything

there's nothing that can be introduced

into the world that people won't abuse

so yes

they'll abuse it but will the police

resource constraint

cause the police to be like a really

useful check on this but they won't act

unless it's like really obvious and when

it's really obvious maybe they should

act right

so i'm not sure the only thing i know

for sure is that you could test it in

one state

wait a couple years if it worked

then you don't give up your

constitutional rights without getting

something in return

alex brogan

on twitter

uh did a thread with a bunch of good

ideas about persuasion but there was one

that he had there that i'm going to push

back a little bit on

because i have a counterfeit so here's a

persuasion tip of the day

so what alex wrote was i called it the

rule of three i think this came from

mckinsey or someplace that whenever

you're trying to persuade a person

to do something always present three

reasons

never two never four but exactly three

and the idea is

it gets people's attention and most of

us have been hired wired to expect

things in groups of three

so it's more persuasive

and i can see the argument

that maybe there's some hard wiring that

three reasons

is just the right amount

but i would push back on that because my

experience is

if you give people three reasons

the argument goes like this and see if

this sounds familiar

i'll say well there are three reasons

reason number one

it would kill you

reason number two

it would be expensive

reason number three

it's not even doable it's impractical

now

if you give three reasons

people will you know start arguing with

you know parts of those categories

and you'll never you'll never get them

to nail to agree

because the moment you you argue the

first one and they say no it's not going

to kill you and then you do your

argument and

they agree

or or they don't agree they usually get

to the point where they say

but what about that other one and you're

like wait a minute wait a minute are you

conceding this point

and they'll never concede the point

they'll just move to the other point

then you say okay okay we'll get back to

this one because i think i won this but

you didn't agree so let me let me win

these other two and then you

then you make your great point on the

second one what did they do

they say oh now you've made two good

points let's see about this third one

never

never

they'll just move to the third one and

start arguing why you're wrong about

that one and you'll be like well i'm not

so sure i've

settled the first two

did i

and then you argue the third one and you

make your point and now in your mind

you've said all right three arguments

i've now supported all three arguments

we're done here what does the person who

has now been completely vanquished on

all three points do next you tell me in

your own experience you've gone down the

list of three you've completely

vanquished their points

in ways that they don't even have a

response to they literally don't have a

response to it they just move to the

next what happens next

they return to the first one and start

over that's right

name here that is correct

they start over

and they will pretend

that you had never already countered

their first argument they'll just start

back on the first one

and you'll be you'll you'll think

all right do you have amnesia

we just did this

and they'll act like you hadn't

and so you'll think okay well

i'll do it again

and then you'll do the same three again

and you'll say there if you at least you

remember all three debunks so now we're

done and what will they do

they'll start with the first one again

like it never happened

now you've seen this right i'm not the

only person who's gone through this

you know i call it the the well

you keep going down the well and there's

no bottom

anyway

so i would argue that you should take

their strongest argument and debunk it

and then say

boom

if your strongest argument fell apart

yeah do we we don't really need to talk

about the other ones because i'm not i'm

not going to let you escape to them

because i know you'll escape so the

first thing you want to do

is destroy their escape paths

right now you have to be a deadly

debater to do this but

if you're sure you're going to win on

the strongest point

make sure you've you know eliminated all

their escape paths before you annihilate

their first one

by getting them to agree

how about i just take your strongest

point

and if i if i can debunk your strongest

point would you agree

to maybe rethink your the rest of it

we don't have to do it today but just

your strongest point

because if you do that that that gets

rid of their escape has you say yeah

yeah yeah but i just today let's we'll

just talk about the strongest point and

now that you see you were wrong about

that

maybe you should do a little research

that's about as far as you can go people

can talk themselves into things better

than you can talk them into it so if you

sort of point them in the right

direction sometimes they'll walk there

on their own

all right

i believe i feel like there was at least

one thing that i didn't mention today

looking at my notes looking at my notes

nope

that was it

i guess this is

complete

i believe that once again your lives

have been improved by the time that we

spent here together

um

and

how many of you just got smarter

three three of you but i'll get the rest

of you next time

i can't win them all

desantis is pushing back on baby

vaccines

yeah i've heard some weird things on the

baby vaccine story

like the weirdest one was i can't

believe this is right

like there there's something about

the vaccine companies don't have

liability unless it includes kids

unless kids are part of the program or

something did somebody hear that

like that doesn't sound right

i mean

that that doesn't sound true i mean just

on the surface that doesn't sound true

scott stop with the self-importance

i've been advised to stop with my

self-importance

michael i'm going to hide you on this

channel because you're less important

than me

goodbye

i would advise all of you

to ramp up your self-importance

anybody who advises you to think of

yourself as less important

you really need to remove them from your

life immediately

immediately remove them for your life

so

if you'd like to talk to me about how

i'm feeling too good about my abilities

that's great just don't do it around me

i just don't have any interest in you

and i would advise you

to maybe

think better of yourself

i don't know which would make you

happier i'm no doctor

but i'll bet you

that if you learn to think well of

yourself you'll be happier

i think

i think

did i miss uh jordan peterson tweet

discussion oh is there a spicy jordan

peterson tweet

that i missed

can somebody fill me in what did jordan

peterson say that

oh he did he say that

all right

we'll see if there's a jordan peterson

thing i need to respond to

uh ask schallenberger about biden's oil

lies yeah michael schellenberger does

the best job of

putting things in context especially for

energy questions and homeless stuff

but yeah he's been calling out biden for

for his claims about uh refineries

so was there a jordan peterson tweet

the one with gad's ad should i look it

up it's like you're not gonna tell me

well maybe i'll do that for tomorrow i

won't keep you all right that's all for

today

i will talk to you tomorrow and

i'm hoping that all of you have an

amazing

peterson said you weren't important

what's that say

peterson said you weren't important or

that people weren't important

is that what he said

all right well we'll figure out what he

said

and on that note i'm apparently babbling

even though

this is still

the best experience that most of you

have ever had in your life

and some of you

are going to have an even better

experience later today

i don't know who you are

but probably probably

because that's how it works

um

yes an amazing day coming and i'll talk

to you tomorrow youtube bye for now