Episode 1783 Scott Adams - The News Is Weird But So Are We. Come Join Us

be prepared well i think it's time i think it's time for the best thing that ever happened to you it's called coffee with scott adams and if you went someplace else to watch it you were in the wrong place but those of you who are watching it now wow have you chosen correctly and not only that but it's going to another level yep all you need is a copper mug or a glass a tanker tells us time they can't eat jugger flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dope meaning of the day the thing that makes everything better can you feel your dopamine and oxytocin starting to spike probably probably go oh favorite that's so good so good well i did a little thing last night that i don't know if you've ever done this it's called not getting enough sleep wow i'm really good a day or two without enough sleep but how many emergencies can one person have after midnight you know never big ones but always there's always something that you have to get up for at midnight there's always a lost dog or a smell or a leak or some damn thing yes i did have another water leak problem that's another story cnn's ratings continue to plunge do you know why their ratings continue to plunge because their new boss has tried to make them report real news without the sensationalism nobody wants it that's the problem nobody wants it you know everybody's so smart and they say you know why can't the news give us just the straight news like it did in the 60s i'll tell you why nobody will watch it so cnn is is embarking in an experiment to destroy their own business apparently in which they're going to try to be less sensational why would anyone watch less sensational news if you had a choice between sensational news and less sensational news meaning that the hyperbole would be added or not which one would you watch you say you'd watch the one without the hyperbole that's why you say if i did a survey i bet a lot of people say you know i don't need all that opinion and all that exaggeration and bigotry and one side is right and one side is wrong i don't need any of that but if you were given two choices you would take that as long as it was on your side who in the world wants to see neutral things when they can see victory because that's what the the news sources do they tell you your site is right if you turn on fox news it is going to be one story after another telling you that you were right all along meaning you as a fox news regular viewer yep you were right all along when you warned that if this happens bad things will happen well here it is you are so smart who's not going to watch that i mean seriously if you could watch news that's just somebody did something we don't know what it means or we totally know what it means and it proves how smart you are which one are you going to watch i'm going to watch the one that says i'm smart i may be small but i'm not unaware of it all right um here's the perpetual news news you know the news that never changes every day germany is in a gas shortage uh as andres backhouse i think i saw a tweet in which he pointed out the news is that this wasn't already news uh why is germany just preparing for a shortage because that's the story germany's getting more aggressive about preparing the public for upcoming gas shortages well they're not upcoming they're already there so there's already gas shortage because of russia now russia says you have to reduce the amount of gas not to punish germany but rather because they couldn't get equipment from the west that was needed to keep their facilities working what do you think is true do you think it's true that the one and only reason putin cut gas production is to put pressure on the economies so that they would give him what he wants or do you think that he didn't have spare parts because that was exactly our strategy to deny him spare parts he's kind of calling your bluff isn't he not yours but you know so the united states says we're going to sanction russia and they won't be able to get you know any modern spare parts so their industries that require require western technology will eventually crumble and then it works and they can't give spare parts and so they can't deliver gas so germany doesn't have enough gas isn't that exactly what we were trying to do am i wrong if if we were if we were preventing russia for getting for from getting this replacement equipment and there was no exception for the energy industry as far as i know weren't we making sure that germany had a shortage this year if you were putin which would you prefer doing reducing the gas to germany and making them replace your sources maybe forever or selling as much gas to germany as you possibly can making as much profit as you can to keep the russian economy as strong as you can which one of those would have been a better strategy because they're both sort of you know longer term war strategy you know one says put a little pressure on the enemy and you know that'll be one part of the larger picture of why they fold maybe maybe the pressure on germany's public will make them fold i don't know maybe but it's also possible that having russia make more money by selling more gas could be a good thing too we don't know what's good and bad anymore we've completely lost the ability to know that if something happens whatever the something is therefore something else will happen i just saw a mike cerovitch tweet just before i came on i'm trying to digest it as sort of a new thought and he says i'm paraphrasing that if you think you know what's going to happen with real estate prices um he thinks you should be blocked immediately and anybody who's sure they know what's going to happen with real estate prices because one of the things he points out is that sure you know interest rates are going up so mortgages are more expensive so it's harder to buy a house that makes sense so if it's harder to buy a house the prices of houses might go down but as mike points out rents are probably going up because there are more people than places to live i think that's the only reason rent goes up right there are more people than there are places to live so as long as that's the case people are either going to have to pay more for a rent or more for a house so you're always going to have all these you know counter-balancing forces nobody's really smart enough to know how any of this turns out isn't that weird do you remember when we were so smart that we had learned from the carter administration what what variables have to be in place to cause something called stagflation so it's you know inflation at the same time you have low growth which is the two worst things you could have and we thought okay now we've seen this situation we know that when these variables are in place you'll get that worse situation and then the variables fell into place again and then nothing like that happened because it turns out we're really bad at predicting the future we think we know okay these variables produce this outcome no we don't we really don't so what is pretty much every economist saying is going to happen next year a recession right is there any economist even one in public who is saying you know i think we're not going to have a recession i haven't seen one of you have you seen any professional economist say that next year you know maybe not maybe not a recession i haven't kramer well is kramer a professional uh economist i don't know i guess he's close to it um so i'm gonna i'm gonna do uh i guess this would be a public demonstration i'm going to predict the opposite of what every smart person is predicting so every smart person and i admit they're smart right this is i'm not i'm not mocking them with sarcasm over the smart people no they are actually smart they're people who have you know phds in economics done it all their life they're smart these are really smart people no there's no doubt about that and every one of them says recession so i'm gonna i'm gonna predict the opposite do you know why why would i predict the opposite of every smart person why because nobody can predict the future it's not a thing it's just not a thing it's probably it could be a it could be a coin flip you know next year could be a coin flip you just don't know there are too many variables but here's the strategy you've seen me do it before here's the strategy i'll tell you you know while i'm doing it what happens if i'm wrong because i didn't tweet it nobody'll ever remember right but if i'm right i'll take this you know this clip and pass it around and say well looks like i was right so so on a risk-reward basis it makes sense for me to make this prediction because if i'm wrong people will say um you predicted the opposite of every smart thing in the world every smart person in the world and he was wrong that's interesting weird there's probably something we missed about that story you'll just forget it but what if i get it right if i get it right you're never going to hear the end of it now let me put this in context something like i don't know 20 years ago or something i made a prediction that evolution would be debunked in scientific terms in my lifetime now that's ridiculous right that's about as close as you can get oh and i also specified that it would not be debunked in religious terms that it would debunk within the realm of you know science and logic now that's a ridiculous prediction if i'd been wrong i would have just said well it hasn't happened yet but it will so i'd always have an excellent strategy right yeah well it hasn't happened yet but any moment now but then it happened then um in my opinion evolution has been completely debunked by the simulation theory now i'm not saying the simulation theory is definitely the right one but if you do the math and the logic it is maybe a trillion times more likely than evolution still either one's possible i suppose but one is you know a trillion times more likely i could go through the math but you've heard that too many times so that's the weirdest probably the weirdest dumbest prediction ever anybody ever made the evolution doesn't exist because if we're a simulation the past is only created when you need it otherwise you don't need it so meaning that if we're a simulation there's nothing below the ground until you see it so if you dug a hole the the stuff that you were digging into would only start to exist as you got near it it wouldn't exist until you were digging the hole and you were you were uncovering something nobody's seen before so that's the theory so there's no there's no evolution because there's no history it's all imaginary so that's my my prediction is that the uh the and and i'll even give you a why because if i don't give you y then just it's even sketchier so here's why the why is there too many variables that we communicate too well these days meaning that whenever there's a problem the internet tells you there's a problem and then people jump on it because problems need to be solved and the problem solvers and the problems are are connected almost immediately and so i'm going to say that because we communicate better than we've ever communicated before that we will avoid a recession in the united states in the united states and and i'm going to take credit if we only have a slight recession would you give me that would you give me if if it's maybe a tactical recession but it's just like we just touch it and then then come out of it well you'd give me that right that would be sort of not a recession you know we just brush it and then bounce out of it so that's my prediction and it's based on the fact that we can recover and adjust faster than we've ever ever done before we'll see now if i'm wrong i'll ask you to forget i ever said this as quickly as possible because it would be super embarrassing no i'm just kidding i never get embarrassed i can't remember the last time i was embarrassed like literally i can't even remember the last time i was embarrassed it really is a superpower if you can learn to be free of embarrassment which somehow i've managed to do i mean it took me decades to get to this point but it is a wonderful existence how many times do you say to yourself oh if i do this i'm gonna look stupid or somebody will mock me or you know forever there'll be that photograph or whatever i don't have any of those thoughts ever i go through i go through my entire day and never thinking about that while somebody's going to think about me later it's wonderful well here's a small story that might be a big story um i've often said that although although our billionaire class is often maligned what would we do without them it's an interesting question right sure there are billionaires doing things you don't like sure but what about the ones who are doing things you like they're really really important here's an example mark cuban has this online pharmacy a startup so they're they're selling pharmaceutical drugs but they're selling them for i don't know how but they're selling them for way way way way less than you normally could get them i'm not sure exactly what method he's using to lower the cost now they don't have all the drugs that you could have they're starting with a you know a set of popular ones i guess and they're expanding i think mark cuban just said he expanded it but he was responding today to a tweet from somebody who said that it saved his life because he could afford his anti i forget what the fellow's problem was but he tweeted that basically the cost of some anti uh spasm or something drug but anyway he basically said it saved his life so mark cuban starts a company that at least this gentleman said saved his life now who was going to do it if mark cuban didn't do it right maybe somebody would have but i i really think that we underestimate how much impact the billionaire class is having on our well-being you just don't realize it you know you just get mad because they've got their billions of dollars now i'm going to give you one more defense for the billionaires one more defense for the billionaires maybe two billionaires don't spend much of their own money you know that right if you have a billion dollars like how much does elon musk consume personally just to you know get by he probably spends a lot traveling because he's got businesses he has to go back and forth that's sort of the business business expense mostly i don't know that elon musk even spends much money on himself because you know his health care is the same as everybody else's he's food like everybody else he doesn't seem to wear designer clothing i don't know if he owns a car does elon musk go in a car i mean ironically he owns a car company but do you think he actually owns a car i'll bet he doesn't i bet he doesn't own the car does he i don't know maybe maybe maybe there's one in the company name and he drives it or something but if you think about how much a billionaire consumes of their own money it's nothing it's eventually a small money amount that they use on themselves so he says dude seriously you can do better than that you could do better than dude seriously i that's not helping me at all give me a little bit more a little bit more in the comments here and so i say that about myself i look i look at all the money i've ever made in my life and then i say what percentage of all the money i made am i going to spend personally like on my own you know well-being and the answer is 5 i'm i've never calculated but just off the top of my head i think maybe five percent something like that the rest would go to family members you know donations uh trying to invest in companies that work or don't work but basically it's being put to use right for other people you billionaires don't spend their own money they can but they hardly ever do so basically a billionaire has made a billion dollars for you i mean you think of it the way the way things are organized it's for the billion billionaire right but the billionaire who makes a billion dollars is not making it to spend it you don't make a billion dollars to spend a billion dollars it wouldn't even make sense you couldn't spend it if you wanted to i mean on consumption you could invest it so uh when i see stuff like this like mark you've been literally saving some guy's life probably lots of people by having lower cost farm pharmaceuticals one of the biggest problems in the country and so he goes right after it he solves it now do you think that he would have gone into this business if he were not already a billionaire maybe maybe it was just a good business so maybe what if if he had been you know if he had to borrow money to do it maybe he would have i don't know but this has the feeling of something that only a billionaire would do you know what i mean because i feel like somebody would have done it already if you could do it without being a billionaire because i it must be high enough risk that you'd have to be a billionaire to even bother taking a run at this i don't know we'll see but good luck then now there's a story i i don't know how stupid the news business thinks the public is but i think it's reached a new level and lack of lack of appreciation for the public mind now i'm not saying they're wrong having a low opinion of the public's ability to think is not wrong it's just sort of distasteful when you see it and there's no better example than this story that says that i think this was in cnn probably that privately rupert murdoch quote knew trump lost the election but because rupert murdoch apparently allowed or encouraged it's not clear fox news to talk about the election in an opinion way as if there were some questions to it there's some thought that uh that there's some kind of smoking gun here that rupert murdoch was pushing lies is that what happened how could rupert rupert murdoch or fox news opinion people push a lie about the election when it's unaudited how can you call it a lie when you simply don't know and that's what they're selling to the public they're selling to the public that if an election doesn't have an obvious problem that the courts have verified is a real problem unless you have that narrow situation then you can conclude that the election was completely fair without knowing anything about it because you know if you didn't know this we don't have a way to audit elections you can audit elements of the election like certain things you can recount the ballots for example but you don't know what happens when your digits get into the the computer systems you don't know what the software is doing there's no order for that so if you don't know what the software is doing it doesn't really help you to count the pieces of paper because it turns into software at some point it turns into data and if you can't audit the data after the the pieces of paper have turned into data you haven't really audited so um and so you see major stories by serious people who will tell you that rupert murdoch privately knew trump lost the election do you know who knew trump lost the election nobody nobody it was unknowable because at the time of the election there were no audits that had been completed and there's still no audits that have been completed that are total audits you can audit elements of an election but not not the entire thing so and this is sold to us like legitimate news can you imagine somebody saying that if we have we have no way to know if something is true or false and therefore the people who said maybe is false just maybe maybe is false that those people are definitely wrong and should be condemned no you should condemn anybody who's certain the in this story are the ones who are sure either way if you can tell me if you can look me in the face and say i am positive this election was fair you're a you're an idiot like yeah i don't even want to be in the same room with you you're so dumb like nothing good could come from this conversation if you know the unknowable and you're saying to me right in my face i know the unknowable to do things that can't be known i know them because i know the unknowable all right so if you're positive the election was fair you're a idiot there's no there's no way around it but my friends and i say this with love if you're positive the election was rigged in a way that's you know big enough that it changed the the outcome yeah you're a idiot too you're 82.

sorry sorry if you're positive now if you if you have a strong suspicion well then i'd say you're a normal person and i applaud you yay normal suspicion if you're just a skeptical person and you say you know i wish this system were improved so that we could know for sure well then i'd say you are an awesome person you're an amazing person because you're you know like me the standard of amazingness how much are you like me that's that's how i judge people same way you do same way you do but the fact i find it actually insulting like actually it bothers me when i see a news story where they treat it like there could be a certainty in either direction about something you couldn't know it's unknowable and it just makes me nuts yes they do treat us like we're idiots but they're not wrong in many cases um so i i tweeted that uh just so i don't get canceled i wanted i wanted the world to know that i was with the majority on this right so i tweeted that i've decided to join the majority opinion in the united states and uh with this tweet i publicly declared that i know the unknowable that our unaudited elections in 2020 were perfectly fair so i wanted to join the majority who seems to hold that opinion so did that publicly um i you know there's one confusing thing about the news today i don't know if you noticed it did you notice anything weird about the stories like the mix of stories in the news today something strange did anybody see it i'm not the only one yeah okay i think one of you saw two yeah there were you know normally let's say they're 25 stories in the news i saw out of the 25 or so stories i must have seen five or six and a 25 that were not about the trans community and i thought to myself what's going on i i was a little confused because normally what i expect would be all 25 stories would have at least an angle or you know they would frame it to be about the trans community and today i think there i there had to be at least five or six out of 25 that didn't have anything to do with trans and i don't know why like there's no reason for it is it is there a reason to leave it out of those stories because we've got it in you know we've got a elon musk connection because one of elon musk's children is trans and so through elon musk you connect that to like everything else from climate change to space to everything else um then there's you know the title ix story then there's a story about ellen page bravely inserting a trans character into one of her products and i thought to myself i i don't see any trans element of the ukraine war which might be why it's if you notice that the war in ukraine started out to be it was like it's all the headlines and it like shrunk and drunk and drunk and today the news on ukraine is going could be the same news every day we're trying to give them more resources they need more weapons russia made some gains but the plucky ukrainians are holding out strong but there's nothing about trans in that whole story and i'm thinking that's probably why it disappeared today the story is like ah there's a city you never heard of looks like russia is going to take a run for it and that's it now imagine if it had been a city full of the trans community imagine if there had been only one city in ukraine that was like the famous place where a lot of people in the trans community went to live well this would be a different war wouldn't it news would be all over that and you know i'm mocking it but it's hard to imagine anything that's a smaller problem in the world than the trans situation and let me be clear if you're in the situation this might be the biggest problem for you like as an individual but in terms of our national problems isn't it among the smallest if you were to make a list of all the big challenges in america where would where would the trans situation be it would be very very far down right in terms of national problems in terms of individual problems that might be your top problem or top issue i don't want to call it a problem all right speaking of that do you all know a famous podcaster ethan klein i guess he associates more with the left and of course you know dr jordan peterson who some say is associated too much some say with the right now i'm not sure that he would agree with that characterization but that's what people say about him and there's a little dust up here where jordan peterson went after ellen page because ellen had said in public i guess that she was proud that she had she was inserting a trans character in the the umbrella academy or something some movie project and and i guess jordan peterson said remember when pride was a sin uh and then he says ellen page just had her press removed by a criminal physician now the criminal part of course is hyperbole because it's not criminal if the justice system does not consider it a crime which it doesn't so you should see criminal as you know hyperbole and meaning that he's way far against it and maybe he thinks you should think about making a criminal i won't read his mind but um so that was the story and i'm not giving you any opinion on the story so it's opinion about the people who have opinions on the story my opinion is i'm i like to throw this in every now and then because i can be a confusing public voice i'm very pro-trans which is different from saying therefore i support everything that the trans community wants no no i don't support anything that everybody wants anybody wants the left the right the trans community i don't i don't support everything that every anybody wants but i support them completely meaning that people or people let people choose let people be free do people make the wrong choice probably i can't think of any domain in which people don't make wrong choices can you but we don't let them not make those choices in most cases we still let them make the choice i don't think this is different you know if when i look at it well when you talk about children you're really talking about the parents choice right i'm not i'm not suggesting that children make adult choices that's that's really not even about trans is it i mean it's hard to say that's a trans issue that's more of a parenting issue so then why is suicide illegal don't ask me um you're talking about school not parents rights uh i don't think we disagree on any of the the stuff about who has the rights to do stuff i don't think that's worth getting into we i don't think we disagree on any of that we're pretty clear about who has what rights or who should have what rights you know i think we all want parents to have the dominant rights and all that stuff um all right well the the trans issue is is certainly interesting but let's let's see what uh ethan lyon said so jordan peterson made this provocative statement remember when pride was a sin now i don't know i'm not going to try to interpret exactly what he meant there because he's smarter than i am what would be dumber than trying to interpret um somebody's words when the person who said it is smarter than you are like that you need a little bit of humility to try to imagine what somebody is thinking if they're smarter than you and uh jordan peterson is smarter than all of us and most of us not you of course not you but he's smarter than i am um i i kind of have my own take on this uh remember when pride was a sin i'm gonna i'm gonna give it to you in my own special way i've always been um weirded out by anybody who is proud about their situation for which there's been some bigotry now i'm a super pro gay community in lgbtq but i never understood why you would be proud of your sexual orientation i do understand why you'd not be ashamed of it that part makes perfect sense but why would you be proud i feel like just breaking even would be the the goal here how about we just don't feel bad about it not feeling bad seems like the goal to just not be bothered by it to ignore it to make it no longer part of our decision making that's the goal as soon as you're proud about it you've overcompensated you've just taken one mistake and replaced it with another one this is why i've never understood uh white supremacists and i think even even uh yesterday i was accused in public of being a white supremacist i don't even understand that here's why why do i get credit for what strangers did because the the the white people who invented things and conquered countries and did awesome things none of them were me i didn't do any of that i didn't i didn't find any countries i didn't invent anything well i did but i mean nothing important so why would i take pride just as an example why would i take pride in being white it doesn't make sense that's that's taking pride in someone else's accomplishment i'm not even entirely sure if i should be proud about my own accomplishments but you know i think it works well if you're proud about what you physically do in the world and if it's good for the world that's probably a positive thing you know you get a little payoff for doing something good oh i feel pride it feels good but if you're proud of strangers accomplishments what is wrong with you what is wrong with you to say that somebody is a white supremacist is almost giving them a pass isn't it it's almost like giving them okay we will accept we'll accept your interpretation of things and you know just disagree with it that's not what's happening what's happening is people are taking credit for strangers accomplishments let's just call it out now if you're going to put a white hood on and dance around in your white robes in the kkk you just told me that you get credit for a stranger's work the work that strangers did because you're a similar uh you know trace amount amount of genetic code is is similar what that's ridiculous so i'm completely with jordan peterson although my reasons for it might be different i don't know i can't be sure but i don't think people should be claiming pride for anything you shouldn't be proud about being gay you shouldn't be proud about being white you shouldn't be proud about being black it's just what you are how about how about we just stop talking about it if it doesn't matter because it doesn't wasn't tesla gay now somebody do me a uh a fact check i believe is rumored that isaac newton was gay leonardo da vinci rumored to be gay right so somebody says touring don't know about that tesla was not somebody says tesla was not but anyway whether they were or whether they were not da vinci was it da vinci or michelangelo or both i know but certainly you could go into history and you could find the most amazingly accomplished lgbtq people should the lgbtq people take pride and that there were so many famous people and geniuses that were also in their community and the answer is no no you shouldn't it's just a coincidence has nothing to do with you stop making it about you if somebody was really smart 200 years before you were born you don't get any credit for that none i give you no credit for somebody else sucking a 300 years ago sorry sorry that's not on you you did nothing nope nothing you get no credit for that so ethan klein went after jordan peterson for going after ellen page and ellen page doctor and ethan klein said this is pretty this is quite a public fight he says of jordan peterson he goes jordan you have completely lost the plot anything that was inspiring about you is long gone you have yourself out to the worst among us the worst among us now you are nothing more than a useful idiot to the hordes of hateful bigots you have forsaken any semblance of decency shame on you twitter no shame on you jordan peterson to which i say the worst among us who exactly is he referring to as the worst among us i believe he's referring to the political right is he not is he not referring to republicans in general as the worst among us because i don't think that he's saying jordan peterson you took sides with let's say the violent people in the you know january 6 protest i don't think he's saying that it looks like he's saying that simply being associated with the political right is making you associate with the worst among us that's how i read it i mean again you don't know what he was thinking when he wrote it but the way i i interpret it is that ordinary republicans are quote the worst among us because i know he's not talking about you know the subset of republicans who do bad things because that wouldn't make sense because there's a subset of every group who do terrible things so i know he's not so dumb as to say that the entire political right is equal to whatever the small number of bad characters is just as i would not say the political left should be defined by the high percentage of criminals who are democrats because most are not the majority are not turns out i think i mean i think that's true anyway um this is the sort of talk ethan's that uh causes people to get hurt i mean when when i predicted that if biden got elected republicans would be hunted this is sort of the thing i had in mind right this is related to that if somebody of this size audience talking about ethan here can say that the political right is quote the worst among us without being specific that he's talking about the worst among the worst because the the claim is not really true is it i have seen jordan peterson being embraced by the political right that part's true but i don't remember the kkk interviewing him do you oh no i i don't remember jordan peterson associating with somebody who was some kind of a bigot like or at least objectively speaking you know so everybody gets called the bigot today yeah i don't know it's funny it's interesting to watch this little uh dustup but you know what it feels like it feels like projection doesn't it because the democrats are all some version of amber heard it seems like and i feel like johnny depp is some version of the political right in the weirdest way right because if you look at his career and the way he dresses and the way he lives you're not thinking political right when you see any of that but but you know the way we process things we put it into buckets and amber heard seems like she's she's a democrat because the democrats seem to do this cluster b thing where they do a terrible thing and then the way they see the world is that you're doing the terrible thing and so when ethan says that jordan is associating with the worst among us i wonder if he's worried that he's doing that because the democrats have some bad people in their in their category too so i wonder if he wakes up and thinks i don't know if i'm on the side of the good people and then suddenly he's making a public attack against somebody who's who is basically him but the left left version of him i don't know it looks a little like projection you can't say that i mean i'm not qualified to make that determination but am i wrong that all democrats feel like some version of amber heard you know it's just the way we our brains have been let's say primed yeah so i would say uh i'm going to agree with the comment i'm seeing on locals i don't agree with everything that jordan peterson says but it's always interesting it's always provocative and i think it's always additive in the sense that he's not trying to hurt people he's trying to make things better and i think he does um feminism is all but dead now somebody says there's a new york times column on saying that feminism is all but dead i don't don't see that do you what do you disagree with him about um i've heard him say some religious interpretations of things that i didn't quite line up with so mostly that um and i also think that on the trans stuff he's probably further than i am but i'd have to i'd have to really see exactly what he said i'm not entirely sure that's true um what concealed carry is unconstitutional according to the supreme court oh client has been getting heat from his lgbt audience after recent comments oh yeah my criticism is vague that's true yeah you know in general when uh i'm talking about notable people who've said lots of things about lots of things i generally walk away with either a sense that i've agreed with everything or there's something i disagree with but i don't i don't often remember exactly what i disagree with all right um oh it's open carry open carry was found unconstitutional what i don't know i guess i have to look into that kangaroo says i'm a trans person and i find it insufferable how the community injects itself into every issue yeah you know it's been successful because the lgb lgbtq community has done a great job i mean a great job i don't know who's done a better job of changing how people think and and winning acceptance from from a bad place but you know what's weird i i feel as if we've had trans forever and i i don't remember it being a big deal when you know 20 years ago like i remember being in a seminar in which the um instructor was trans and it was you know it was a conversation and then in the class because it's sort of just interesting you know it was someone who uh appeared as a woman but we were told was born with male parts i don't even know if that's true but it was you know the talk of the class and stuff but it was more it was more the talk of the class because it was interesting i don't remember anybody having some kind of a negative thought about it that you know you wouldn't take the class or they were unqualified to teach it or anything or anything it was just it was just an interesting factoid and now it's become something else i don't know if things got better did they it got so political when before it was just oh well there's somebody making a choice that i've never made like it seemed like it was less of a big deal and maybe that was better i don't know i don't know if it was better somebody says it got far worse all right well now somebody so a trans member of the audience just said that things got worse i guess i would take your opinion on that over my own all right um you're right in the 70s and 80s people were transitioning yeah it just i just feel like we went from more tolerant to less tolerant because we talked about it more or something i don't know with enough confidence you can use any bathroom you want you know i don't know why this reminded me of this but do all of you know that my county in california alameda county i think we're the last place in the united states with masks it's that it's actually still like they reinstituted it recently because it was an uptick is there any place else in the united states with masks are required except where i live there's not right in the united states am i i'm the only place in the united states we have to wear a mask right so you should see what the compliance looks like where i live it's become funny the employees are almost universally wearing the masks below their nose almost universally no that's too much i'll say i'll say at least half i say half of the employees are mocking the requirement by wearing it below their nose now if you come into a business and and the employees are wearing it below the nose are you going to keep your mask on no so the enforcement is maybe 10 i would say 90 percent of the businesses here have just said okay so there's a there's a new rule that we have to wear masks and let me let me understand this everyone else in the country maybe the world i don't know everyone else in the country they don't have to wear a mask but in my county just in my little county you got to wear a mask just when you go in the store so since this is such a good idea i think i'll wear my mask like that and like everybody here is just doing you masks now it's like yeah i got a mask on because it's a requirement oh and government you i got my mask on how about you are you wearing a mask yep i got my mask on uh i'm not trying as hard as i used to to comply but i'm kind of going through the uh going through the motions so i got my mask on it's not covering my nose or my mouth but i like to be a good citizen so i'm wearing my mask so that's that's what it looks like to go into a store in my county the people are so done the people are so done with the masks that now it's just it's like a big joke right and by the way i i don't think i've been asked to put on the mask anywhere that is required so far i have worn a mask without complaint in medical in medical buildings because i just don't want that fight like i'm not going to get in a fight with medical professionals over a medical question it's just not where i'm going to take the fight but you know the grocery store they don't care the gr safeway my local safeway they've obviously been instructed that they're not going to talk to the customers about anything related to masks at all all right if it looks like i ran out of topics today that's because i overslept and there wasn't much news today anyway did i miss anything jewel uh yeah there's a story about jewel and what is the story that the biden administration wants to get rid of vaping as well as nicotine all right so is there any other um and the other topics that i how often are you recognized by fans and safeway that's a good question i don't know because i'm recognized in a different way than other people are recognized so i think i do get recognized fairly often uh because of the live stream so when i was you know just doing cartooning it was rare to be recognized i think now probably every time i go to safeway people recognize me probably every time but they don't often um come up to me if they do they're usually conservatives and i may have told you this before but if i'm at the gym and somebody wants to say something nice about my work they whisper it now so people will come up to me and they'll just say i watch you a lot i watch your live stream every day it's great i really like it and but they won't say it so other people can hear it so i'm like i'm basically like there's their secret pleasure you know uh is pleasant and a persuasive name for a city yes it is true story the name of my town is pleasanton like pleasant owen the town next to me is livermore liver more who wants more liver nobody and which which one has higher property values pleasanton or liver more pleasant yes for now you lived in ruby hill you were practically my neighbor all right um about the pope's retirement no but i have an update from the pope um if i didn't mention this um the pope and this is sort of an update is opposed to war still so if i didn't cover that news now you've heard it um your family thinks it's weird that i watch the sip how weird is your family i mean if we were to have a competition would your would i be weirder than your family who thinks is weird to watch this incredible content i don't know i don't know tell your family and i'm talking to you directly now this is to the family who thinks this is weird not weird this is normal everything else is weird all right i got nothing else to say i'm just babbling now and uh unless you have any weird questions i like the weird ones oh maybe maybe we'll do that i i will answer the weirdest question you have does anybody have a weird question how's the house breaking problem i haven't had one recently but my neighborhood is so bristling with video cameras now you i don't think you could walk one inch in my neighborhood without three different security cameras being on you we are so surveilled here at least outdoors do i have a safety room maybe let me just say what i've said before i built my house to keep me alive in every possible way you know so as as a place i can exercise you know so it's built to keep me alive even if there's a national natural disaster my house is going to be the one that survives it it's the one that won't burn down and even if the neighborhood burned down my house wouldn't burn down in all likelihood because it's like fireproof to the max so i i'm always ready for everything yeah i got bad plumbing this way ah here's a question why do you use it feels right as opposed to seems right does it align with your use of sexy as a compliment well i wouldn't um no i wouldn't equate those two things in any way i like feels right because it feels right communicates that you're not based on reason seems right sounds like you've got a reason but it feels right you're just saying ah that's my instinct it just feels right why do you like living so much i don't why would you think that i'm not sure living is a good deal are you have you ever had that thought i mean i don't know what it feels like to not be living but i assume it's just you know not conscious so it can't be bad but if but if you're having a bad day don't you ever think why am i even doing this what's the whole point of this i i think it's somewhat irrational to want to be alive and to reproduce but it feels good sometimes just want to see what happened that's a good answer i think that curiosity is a way to get out of fungs here's your tip for the day that will help some of you a lot do you like these this this will be my tip that guarantees that will help some of you not many but some percentage will be absolutely your life could be changed and that's this when you're feeling really really bad and you've lost all interest and maybe there's some good or bad things that are going to happen to you and you're just like ah change your frame to curiosity if if your frame is how do you feel maybe you don't feel so good it's a bad frame to live in change your frame to what the hell is going to happen tomorrow like if i made this change or if i said this thing or i invited this person to this thing what would happen i mean just just change your frame to curiosity curiosity is one of your most base instincts right your your uh your operating system of your body it operates on curiosity like if you didn't have curiosity you probably wouldn't do much so it's a really fundamental part of you is curiosity so it can absorb your it can absorb your thinking and you can you can put your mind through that frame pretty easily so watch how easily this works let me tell you how i've used it when i find myself in a funk and everybody does right everybody's got their bad week or two um i say you know if i if i hate living anyway why don't i just mix it up a little bit why don't i do something that would either embarrass me or be funny or at least i'll feel something like i'll just feel something and so i say all right what would happen if i just did this thing that is so bold nobody would do this thing now i'm not talking about dangerous things i'm talking about things that could be maybe socially embarrassing but if they worked out they'd be great such as you know asking out the most attractive person you know now how would that usually turn out well you probably think not so well but what if you were just curious what would happen i mean what if i did what if i did put out this invitation what if i did throw a party what if i did you know uh say yes to this thing what if i did it completely changes your your life uh there was one year during my first marriage that just to change things up i decided that i would say yes to everything i didn't want to tell anybody that i was saying yes to everything because then they take advantage but for about a year no matter what people would say i'd say yes even though i desperately didn't want to do it just to see how it turned out because i have this problem i don't know if some of you do that if somebody gives me an amazing idea to like hey let's go somewhere and do something my first response is almost always the same that sounds like a lot of work or i don't i can't even imagine why that would be fun or that's like a lot of work for a little bit of benefit you know i have all these thoughts but then you do it and you enjoy it and it adds to your life and you mess with people and you had some fun and you had some laughs so you kind of always wish you did it but my first instinct is always to find a reason not to so i took a year where i would just say yes and then just make it work and um uh it was actually pretty cool and pretty fun but i wouldn't do it again do you know why because i ended up saying yes to things that i really wish i hadn't they didn't work out at all and i'm not sure you know i'm not sure that i got enough of a benefit out of it but it was it was an exceptional experiment and the the experiment was how well can you predict what you will enjoy and the answer is i wasn't that good at it there were enough surprises that i got some humility out of that um michael signer wrote a book about saying yes really yeah the white rule water rafting was an example example in costa rica i had a bad experience there learned to fly yeah i don't think so how often do you trim your toenails whenever i notice that i need to does it seem to you that your fingernails and your toenails grow at sometimes rapid rates and sometimes slowly i don't know if that's an imagination is that real like sometimes it seems like they'll just be one day like what the hell happened they just turned into a werewolf overnight is that's real so there really is different phases i don't know maybe well i would remind you again that if you listen to this uh live stream for all the new content you'll probably be disappointed the best way to watch this is like you're in a conversation but you're thinking about other things or exercising or cleaning the house or something and i'm just that friendly voice that's your friend in your head and how many of you you know that's my favorite compliment when people say they like my voice because you know my story three and a half years i couldn't speak i had a rare disorder and for those years my affirmations was that i scott adams will speak perfectly now there's no such thing as speaking perfectly but i do this every day you know the live stream and i do think that there's something about practice that makes a difference and i do think that i've experimented with different voice technique and that at this point my voice is actually quite powerful it has an effect how many of you have had a reaction specifically to the voice quality that i have tell me something about that are there those of you who like listening just because the way i talk so let me tell you some of the tricks you want to hear the tricks because it's not natural in any way like voice production is completely artificial so one of the things i do and it took me years to do this is learn how to add variety to my voice so that's the first thing so instead of this is the way i would normally talk and if i thought i was getting excited i'd go up like this but really it was just the same thing just a little bit higher it wasn't much variety at all and i would just talk in the same base like this and people would stop listening after about a second because you can't listen to something that sounds like this so the first lesson was from the movie network where the on-air personality was teaching somebody how to make something sound interesting and the secret is that you punch words randomly and it's the randomly part that blows your mind you're like randomly shouldn't you punch the important words yeah doesn't doesn't seem to matter i mean you could but it's the variety that's really drawing people in so when joe biden does his whisper thing that everybody makes fun of it totally works it's just that he whispers things that aren't important if if he if he made his whispering light up with his also most important points you know that were shocking or something that would be better but he often says ordinary things in a whisper it's a good technique now i don't know if you notice uh because i'm conscious of it now but i try to go up and i try to go down and i try to give you a lot of variety but i also give you pauses like that because they drive you crazy don't they when you're expecting something and then you get the pause like that it just makes you crazy but it also makes you pay attention so i mean i don't pause that long usually now in terms of the actual voice production the trick to use is the humming happy birthday you've heard me say this before if you hum happy birthday so that it produces a hum and the mask of your face is called you know sort of the nose mouth part that gets your voice production out of your throat and larnix and and lungs because you because if you produce your voice in the lower part of your body let's say from here down if that's what's doing most of the work it will sound tight and constrained and people won't want to listen to it but if you hum happy birthday and then talk directly after it in the same in the same production way you get something closer to a perfect voice i shall demonstrate and now the next thing i say is almost perfectly produced because i've moved my production up to the top of my head and when i move it up here it sounds more confident more clean more more sonically appropriate i don't know in some way it just sounds better but now let's see if see if i can take it back so i'm gonna bring my voice production down now it's down here so you so now now i'm gonna be talking on my it's hard it's hard to actually do it wrong now i've done it right for so many years but there is there is a technique and part of the technique is to not be too low which is counter intuitive you would think that a male voice would sound better if it's lower and there's something to that i mean we do have some preference for that it i think it tells you there's some testosterone there or something but far more important than uh how deep your voice is is how confident it is and how clean it is if your voice is both clean and confident then you sound masculine enough uh method acting tips yeah and the way you breathe also will change how you talk that's a mel gibson trick you should breathe the way you want to be acting so if you were playing an actor who was afraid of something work on how you would breathe if you were afraid of something and then when you talk you'll be talking in the way that a person is afraid would talk because you've you've breathed that way so it just puts you in the moment you think the head chest voice description is the opposite i think if you look into it you'll find out that i'm right it does sound i realize it sounds counterintuitive but that's actually part of the point is that it is counterintuitive all right uh any more secrets from behind the curtain uh i'm not going to tell you any more secrets from behind the curtain i mean i can't think of one that fits the fits the need but there is a secret that is seeping out from behind the curtain and i can see it but you can't see it yet because there's a pattern that you haven't noticed there's a certain pattern that's sneaking out so you'll see it in some news i think i've seen it in several news items and so far nobody has connected the dots if they ever do it will be the biggest story in the whole world but i don't think it's ever going to happen and the beauty of it is that if you don't know the story there's no amount of evidence of it that you'll be able to put together you just couldn't put it together let's just say that a lot of the things that happen in the world uh spring from the same source or sources and it's just not obvious but someday it will be some day it will be am i still good good friends with the psychic no i haven't talked to the psychic in years um uh did your spasmodic dysphonia affect the sound of your laugh i mean it affected all of my sounds but i don't think it improved it necessarily you know not everybody laughs did you know that do you know people who don't laugh a lot of them you don't really notice do you there are lots of people who don't ever laugh ever it's like not a thing in the same way that maybe i don't have musical appreciation i think there are lots of people maybe a third who don't have humor appreciation and they don't ever laugh how is that possible i don't know i don't know but i can tell you for sure i do i mean i do humor for a living and i can tell you that a third of the public is only pretending to have a sense of humor they're literally pretending they don't have one and i don't know why i'm the first person to notice i think everybody else thought well everybody's got a sense of humor but maybe they're not laughing at this thing but they would laugh at some other thing nope nope there are people who actually just don't have a sense of humor and they do they will sometimes laugh if somebody falls in a puddle right but that is really really different that's almost not in the same category of humor it's more like a reaction to a thing uh you think the same thing with music does some people pretend to like it but they don't hear it the same way i think you're right about that same with food i have no idea what a foodie tastes because i'm not one when i eat food it's like oh i like this or i don't like it but i have a feeling that people are foodies just have a whole different flavor experience than i do so i feel like this is a good analogy so the way i am to food is the way other people are to humor if you looked at me eating it would look like i'm enjoying my food just like every other foodie but i'm not i mean i assume i'm not your cooking would change my mind maybe it would what's my favorite genre of music well it's unfair to ask at the moment because i'm learning to play the drums so i'm kind of focused on anything that's got a good drum beat so at the moment it's hard to answer that question so anything with a good drum beat especially from the 70s i'm going to like a lot yeah rolling stones buddy rich i don't buddy rich wasn't i feel like he wasn't a drummer he was more like a magician or something i mean i didn't like listening to buddy rich but it was impressive how quickly he could hit her drum i don't know i'm completely unimpressed by him allegedly you know top drummer in the world or something but he was mostly about just being fast i think all right uh we foodies have a working sense of smell so do i my sense of smell came back a few weeks ago weirdly but my allergies also went away let me ask let me ask this again because how many of you and i only want you to answer if both of these are true so if you show some restraint for a moment how many of you have both of these things happen to you number one you got vaccinated any any number of vaccinations and number two you did not have allergies this season when normally you always do am i the only one so i don't know that there's a correlation but i i got vaccinated and that i never had spring allergies again it's only been one year i guess anybody else have that experience i'm seeing some people say yes but i think maybe it's just a low pollen season where i am or something maybe it's just that i don't know yeah all right more no's and yeses your allergies came back but a number of people are saying they're having their best year but i think is anybody having let me let me reverse the question is anybody having a bad year an unusually bad year with allergies go is anybody having yeah i think in my case staying away from the sulphites was the big change for me all right worst okay so a lot of you are having worse years with allergies all right all right so there's nothing there probably um do you laugh at the show family guy yeah some of the episodes of family guy are just ridiculously funny uh others are a little bit phoned in um how do pigeons know the same song i don't know do you talk with gotfeld every day no not every day but we communicate a lot um have i told you lately that i love you you have not and i've noticed that a lot of you have not told me lately that you love me and i'm feeling that because i love all of you so so are you supposed to love me back i know it doesn't work that way have you ever met mike judge no but he's my judge holds a singular distinction in my professional life do you know what that is there's something that mike judge did that no one else has ever done since i became the dilbert cartoonist meaning since i became famous do you know what that is he would not return a phone call he's the only one i've never had anybody who wouldn't return a phone call and tell him you know one of the benefits of being famous is that you can contact other famous people or just other people and if you say who you are they'll like oh i'll definitely return that call because i get to tell a story about i talked to a famous person who wouldn't return a phone call to a famous person you would right wouldn't you if somebody left a message and it was somebody you'd heard of like actually a famous person and they said can you please call me back here's my phone number you would call him back would you not only one time in my entire famous life that's you know maybe 25 years or so in my famous life only one person has refused or for whatever reason i don't know if he refused but only one person didn't return a call it was mike judge don't know why i had a i had a professional question i wanted to ask him but i never got it answered he didn't get the message no doubt it i think he got the message jim davis yeah i've talked to jim davis a number of times jim davis is a great guy well one of the things that people don't understand about the creator of garfield jim davis is that he had a i believe his degree was in business and so it's no surprise that two of the people who had business as a background i'm i would be the other one did better with their cartoons than people who did not have a business background surprise it's probably not a coincidence probably makes a difference if you know how to you know grow a thing if you know how to turn a business into a business i don't think it's a coincidence that the two people with business training did better in their their cartoons i think it's part of the talent stack will california be great again yes yes when's the last time you watched porn see now that's the kind of question that i was looking for why did it take so long to ask me an embarrassing question now i'm not going to answer it because i think there's some kind of questions that uh answering it doesn't help anything but it might hurt something right it can't help me but it might hurt me so um well let me give you an answer the question in all seriousness i've never seen porn now i know a lot of you have and and i hear it's good and i've been thinking about trying it um if i could figure out where it is it's like on the internet or something right but a lot of you have watched porn and uh seem to enjoy it and so i thought to myself well i should check it out but i don't need it i don't need it like you do did anybody believe that did that sound sound a little bit credible at all no okay so that's my official answer never done it never done it don't need it never will unlike the rest of you nobody's buying this at all and i never smoke weed that's correct all right that's all for now and uh i will talk to you tomorrow bye youtube

be prepared

well i think it's time

i think it's time for the best thing

that ever happened to you it's called

coffee with scott adams and

if you went someplace else to watch it

you were in the wrong place

but those of you who are watching it now

wow

have you chosen correctly and not only

that

but it's going to another level yep all

you need is a copper mug or a glass

a tanker tells us time they can't eat

jugger flask a vessel of any kind fill

it with your favorite liquid i like

coffee

and join me now for the unparalleled

pleasure the dope meaning of the day the

thing that makes everything better can

you feel your dopamine and oxytocin

starting to spike probably

probably

go

oh favorite

that's so good

so good

well i did a little thing last night

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

this

it's called not getting enough sleep

wow

i'm really good a day or two without

enough sleep

but

how many emergencies can one person have

after midnight

you know never big ones but always

there's always something that you have

to get up for at midnight there's always

a

lost dog or

a smell or a leak or some damn thing

yes i did have another water leak

problem that's another story

cnn's ratings

continue to plunge

do you know why their ratings continue

to plunge

because their new boss has tried to make

them report real news

without the sensationalism

nobody wants it

[Laughter]

that's the problem

nobody wants it

you know everybody's so smart and they

say you know

why can't the news

give us just the straight news like it

did in the 60s i'll tell you why

nobody will watch it

so cnn is is embarking in an experiment

to destroy their own business apparently

in which they're going to try to be less

sensational

why would anyone watch less sensational

news

if you had a choice

between sensational news

and less sensational news meaning that

the hyperbole would be added or not

which one would you watch

you say you'd watch

the one without the hyperbole

that's why you say

if i did a survey i bet a lot of people

say you know

i don't need all that opinion and

all that exaggeration and bigotry and

one side is right and one side is wrong

i don't need any of that

but if you were given two choices

you would take that as long as it was on

your side

who in the world wants to see neutral

things when they can see victory

because that's what the the news sources

do they tell you your site is right

if you turn on fox news

it is going to be

one story after another

telling you that you were right all

along meaning you as a fox news regular

viewer yep you were right all along

when you warned that if this happens bad

things will happen well here it is you

are so smart

who's not going to watch that

i mean seriously

if you could watch news that's just

somebody did something we don't know

what it means

or we totally know what it means and it

proves how smart you are

which one are you going to watch

i'm going to watch the one that says i'm

smart

i may be small but i'm not unaware of it

all right um

here's the perpetual news news you know

the news that never changes every day

germany is in a gas shortage

uh as andres backhouse i think i saw a

tweet in which he pointed out

the news is that this wasn't already

news

uh

why is germany just preparing for a

shortage because that's the story

germany's getting more aggressive about

preparing the public for upcoming gas

shortages well they're not upcoming

they're already there so there's already

gas shortage

because of russia

now russia says

you have to reduce the amount of gas

not to punish germany

but rather because they couldn't get

equipment from the west that was needed

to keep their

facilities working

what do you think is true

do you think it's true that the one and

only reason putin cut gas production

is to put pressure on the economies

so that they would give him what he

wants

or do you think that he didn't have

spare parts

because that was exactly our strategy to

deny him spare parts

he's kind of calling your bluff isn't he

not yours but

you know so the united states says we're

going to sanction russia and they won't

be able to get

you know any modern spare parts so their

industries that require require western

technology

will eventually crumble

and then

it works

and they can't give spare parts

and so they can't deliver gas

so germany doesn't have enough gas

isn't that exactly what we were trying

to do

am i wrong if if we were

if we were preventing russia for getting

for from getting this replacement

equipment

and there was no exception for the

energy industry as far as i know

weren't we

making sure that germany had a shortage

this year

if you were putin which would you prefer

doing

reducing the gas to germany

and making them

replace your sources maybe forever

or

selling as much gas to germany as you

possibly can making as much profit as

you can

to keep the russian economy as strong as

you can

which one of those would have been a

better strategy

because they're both sort of you know

longer term war strategy

you know one says put a little pressure

on the enemy and you know that'll be one

part of the larger picture of why they

fold

maybe

maybe the pressure on germany's public

will make them fold i don't know maybe

but it's also possible that having

russia

make more money by selling more gas

could be a good thing too

we don't know what's good and bad

anymore we've completely lost the

ability

to know that if something happens

whatever the something is

therefore something else will happen

i just saw a mike cerovitch tweet just

before i came on i'm trying to digest it

as sort of a new thought

and he says i'm paraphrasing

that if you think you know what's going

to happen with

real estate prices

um he thinks you should be blocked

immediately

and anybody who's sure they know what's

going to happen with real estate prices

because one of the things he points out

is that sure you know interest rates are

going up so mortgages are more expensive

so it's harder to buy a house

that makes sense so if it's harder to

buy a house the prices of houses

might go down

but as mike points out

rents are probably going up

because there are more people than

places to live

i think that's the only reason rent goes

up right there are more people than

there are places to live so as long as

that's the case

people are either going to have to pay

more for a rent

or more for a house

so you're always going to have all these

you know counter-balancing forces

nobody's really smart enough to know how

any of this turns out

isn't that weird

do you remember

when we were so smart that we had

learned from the carter administration

what what variables have to be in place

to cause something called stagflation

so it's you know inflation

at the same time you have low growth

which is the two worst things you could

have

and we thought okay now we've seen this

situation we know that when these

variables are in place

you'll get that worse situation

and then the variables fell into place

again

and then nothing like that happened

because it turns out

we're really bad at predicting the

future

we think we know okay these variables

produce this outcome no we don't we

really don't

so what is pretty much

every economist saying is going to

happen next year

a recession right

is there any economist even one

in public

who is saying you know i think we're not

going to have a recession

i haven't seen one of you

have you seen any professional

economist

say that next year you know

maybe not maybe not a recession

i haven't

kramer well is kramer a professional

uh economist

i don't know i guess he's close to it

um

so i'm gonna

i'm gonna do uh

i guess this would be a public

demonstration

i'm going to predict the opposite

of what every smart person is predicting

so every smart person and i admit

they're smart right this is i'm not i'm

not mocking them with sarcasm over the

smart people no they are actually smart

they're people who have

you know phds in economics

done it all their life they're smart

these are really smart people no there's

no doubt about that

and every one of them says recession

so i'm gonna i'm gonna predict the

opposite do you know why

why would i predict the opposite of

every smart person

why

because nobody can predict the future

it's not a thing

it's just not a thing it's probably it

could be a it could be a coin flip

you know next year could be a coin flip

you just don't know there are too many

variables

but here's the strategy

you've seen me do it before

here's the strategy i'll tell you you

know while i'm doing it

what happens if i'm wrong

because i didn't tweet it

nobody'll ever remember

right but if i'm right

i'll take this you know this clip and

pass it around and say well

looks like i was right

so so on a risk-reward basis it makes

sense for me to make this prediction

because if i'm wrong people will say um

you predicted the opposite of every

smart thing in the world every smart

person in the world and he was wrong

that's interesting weird there's

probably something we missed about that

story you'll just forget it

but what if i get it right

if i get it right

you're never going to hear the end of it

now let me put this in context

something like

i don't know

20 years ago or something

i made a prediction that evolution would

be

debunked

in scientific terms in my lifetime

now that's ridiculous right

that's about as close as you can get

oh and i also specified

that it would not be debunked in

religious terms that it would debunk

within the realm of

you know science and logic

now that's a ridiculous

prediction

if i'd been wrong

i would have just said well it hasn't

happened yet

but it will

so i'd always have an excellent strategy

right yeah

well it hasn't happened yet but any

moment now

but then it happened

then um

in my opinion

evolution has been completely debunked

by the simulation

theory now i'm not saying the simulation

theory is definitely the right one

but if you do the math and the logic it

is maybe a trillion times more likely

than

evolution

still either one's possible i suppose

but one is you know a trillion times

more likely i could go through the math

but you've heard that too many times

so

that's the weirdest probably the

weirdest

dumbest prediction ever anybody ever

made

the evolution doesn't exist

because if we're a simulation the past

is only created when you need it

otherwise you don't need it

so meaning that if we're a simulation

there's nothing below the ground until

you see it so if you dug a hole

the the stuff that you were digging into

would only start to exist

as you got near it it wouldn't exist

until you were digging the hole and you

were you were uncovering something

nobody's seen before

so that's the theory

so there's no there's no evolution

because there's no history it's all

imaginary

so

that's my

my prediction

is that the uh

the

and and i'll even give you a why because

if i don't give you y then just

it's even sketchier

so here's why

the why is there too many variables

that we communicate too well

these days

meaning that whenever there's a problem

the internet tells you there's a problem

and then people jump on it because

problems need to be solved

and the problem solvers and the problems

are are connected almost immediately

and so

i'm going to say that because we

communicate better than we've ever

communicated before

that we will avoid a recession in the

united states

in the united states and and i'm going

to take credit if we only have a slight

recession

would you give me that

would you give me if if it's maybe a

tactical recession but it's just like we

just touch it and then then come out of

it

well you'd give me that right that would

be sort of not a recession

you know we just brush it and then

bounce out of it

so that's my prediction

and it's based on the fact that we can

recover and adjust faster than we've

ever

ever done before

we'll see

now if i'm wrong

i'll ask you to forget i ever said this

as quickly as possible because it would

be super embarrassing

no i'm just kidding i never get

embarrassed

i can't remember the last time i was

embarrassed like literally

i can't even remember the last time i

was embarrassed

it really is a superpower

if you can learn

to be free of embarrassment which

somehow i've managed to do i mean it

took me decades to get to this point

but it is a wonderful existence

how many times do you say to yourself oh

if i do this i'm gonna look stupid or

somebody will mock me or

you know forever there'll be that

photograph or whatever i don't have any

of those thoughts ever

i go through i go through my entire day

and never thinking about that

while somebody's going to think about me

later it's wonderful

well here's a small story that might be

a big story

um i've often said that although

although our

billionaire class is often maligned

what would we do without them

it's an interesting question right

sure there are billionaires doing things

you don't like

sure

but what about the ones who are doing

things you like

they're really really important here's

an example

mark cuban has this online pharmacy a

startup

so they're they're selling

pharmaceutical

drugs but they're selling them for i

don't know how but they're selling them

for way way way way less

than you normally could get them

i'm not sure exactly what method he's

using to lower the cost

now they don't have all the drugs that

you could have they're starting with a

you know a set of

popular ones i guess

and they're expanding i think mark cuban

just said he expanded it

but he was responding today to a tweet

from somebody who said that it saved his

life

because he could afford his anti

i forget what the fellow's problem was

but he tweeted that basically the cost

of

some anti

uh

spasm or something drug but anyway

he basically said it saved his life

so mark cuban

starts a company that

at least this gentleman said

saved his life

now who was going to do it

if mark cuban didn't do it right maybe

somebody would have but i i really think

that we underestimate how much impact

the billionaire class is having on our

well-being you just don't realize it you

know you just get mad because they've

got their billions of dollars now i'm

going to give you one more defense for

the billionaires

one more defense for the billionaires

maybe two

billionaires don't spend much of their

own money

you know that right

if you have a billion dollars like how

much does elon musk consume personally

just to you know get by

he probably spends a lot traveling

because he's got businesses he has to go

back and forth that's sort of the

business business expense mostly

i don't know that elon musk even spends

much money on himself

because you know his health care is the

same as everybody else's

he's food like everybody else

he doesn't seem to wear

designer clothing

i don't know if he owns a car

does elon musk go in a car

i mean ironically he owns a car company

but do you think he actually owns a car

i'll bet he doesn't

i bet he doesn't own the car

does he i don't know maybe maybe maybe

there's one in the company name and he

drives it or something

but if you think about how much a

billionaire consumes of their own money

it's nothing

it's eventually a small money amount

that they use on themselves

so he says dude seriously

you can do better than that you could do

better than

dude seriously

i

that's not helping me at all

give me a little bit more a little bit

more

in the comments here

and so i say that about myself i look i

look at all the money i've ever made in

my life

and then i say what percentage of all

the money i made am i going to spend

personally like on my own you know

well-being and the answer is

5

i'm i've never calculated but just off

the top of my head i think maybe five

percent something like that

the rest would go to family members you

know donations

uh trying to invest in companies that

work or don't work but basically it's

being put to use right for other people

you billionaires don't spend their own

money they can

but they hardly ever do

so basically a billionaire has made a

billion dollars for you

i mean you think of it the way

the way things are organized it's for

the billion billionaire right but the

billionaire who makes a billion dollars

is not making it to spend it

you don't make a billion dollars to

spend a billion dollars

it wouldn't even make sense you couldn't

spend it if you wanted to i mean on

consumption you could invest it

so

uh when i see stuff like this like mark

you've been literally saving some guy's

life probably lots of people by having

lower cost farm pharmaceuticals one of

the biggest problems in the country

and so he goes right after it he solves

it

now do you think that he would have gone

into this business

if he were not already a billionaire

maybe

maybe it was just a good business so

maybe what if if he had been you know if

he had to borrow money to do it maybe he

would have i don't know

but

this has the feeling

of something that only a billionaire

would do

you know what i mean because i feel like

somebody would have done it already

if you could do it without being a

billionaire because i it must be high

enough risk

that you'd have to be a billionaire to

even bother taking a run at this i don't

know

we'll see but good luck then

now there's a story

i

i don't know how stupid the news

business thinks the public is

but i think it's reached a new

level and lack of

lack of appreciation for the public mind

now i'm not saying they're wrong

having a low opinion of the public's

ability to think

is not wrong

it's just sort of distasteful when you

see it and

there's no better example

than this story that says that

i think this was in cnn probably

that privately rupert murdoch quote knew

trump lost the election

but because rupert murdoch apparently

allowed or encouraged it's not clear

fox news to talk about the election in

an opinion way

as if there were some questions to it

there's some thought that uh

that there's some kind of smoking gun

here

that rupert murdoch was pushing lies

is that what happened

how could rupert rupert murdoch

or fox news opinion people

push a lie

about the election

when

it's

unaudited

how can you call it a lie when you

simply don't know

and that's what they're selling to the

public they're selling to the public

that if an election

doesn't have an obvious problem that the

courts have verified is a real problem

unless you have that narrow situation

then you can conclude that the election

was completely fair without knowing

anything about it

because

you know if you didn't know this we

don't have a way to audit elections

you can audit elements of the election

like certain things you can recount the

ballots for example but you don't know

what happens when your digits get into

the the computer systems

you don't know what the software is

doing there's no order for that

so if you don't know what the software

is doing

it doesn't really help you to count the

pieces of paper because it turns into

software at some point it turns into

data and if you can't audit the data

after the the pieces of paper have

turned into data

you haven't really audited

so

um

and so you see major stories

by serious people

who will tell you that rupert murdoch

privately knew trump lost the election

do you know who knew trump lost the

election

nobody

nobody

it was unknowable

because at the time of the election

there were no audits that had been

completed

and there's still no audits that have

been completed that are total audits you

can audit elements of an election but

not

not the entire thing

so

and this is sold to us like legitimate

news

can you imagine somebody saying

that

if we have

we have no way to know if something is

true or false

and therefore the people who said maybe

is false just maybe

maybe is false that those people are

definitely wrong and should be condemned

no you should condemn anybody who's

certain

the in this story

are the ones who are sure either way

if you can tell me if you can look me in

the face and say

i am

positive this election was fair

you're a

you're an idiot

like yeah i don't even want to be in the

same room with you you're so dumb

like nothing good could come from this

conversation

if you know

the unknowable and you're saying to me

right in my face i know the unknowable

to do

things that can't be known i know them

because i know the

unknowable all right so if you're

positive the election was fair

you're a idiot

there's no there's no way around it

but

my friends and i say this with love

if you're positive the election was

rigged in a way that's you know big

enough that it changed the

the outcome

yeah you're a idiot too you're

82.

sorry

sorry

if you're positive

now if you if you have a strong

suspicion

well then i'd say you're a normal person

and i applaud you yay normal suspicion

if you're just a skeptical person and

you say you know i wish this system were

improved so that we could know for sure

well then i'd say you are an awesome

person

you're an amazing person

because you're you know like me

the standard of amazingness how much are

you like me

that's that's how i judge people same

way you do same way you do

but the fact i find it actually

insulting like actually it bothers me

when i see a news story where they treat

it like there could be a certainty in

either direction about something you

couldn't know it's unknowable

and it just makes me nuts

yes they do treat us like we're idiots

but they're not wrong

in many cases

um

so i i tweeted that uh just so i don't

get canceled i wanted

i wanted the world to know

that i was with the majority on this

right so i tweeted that i've decided to

join the majority opinion in the united

states

and uh with this tweet i publicly

declared that i know the unknowable

that our unaudited elections in 2020

were perfectly fair

so i wanted to join the majority who

seems to hold that opinion so

did that publicly

um

i you know there's one confusing thing

about the news today i don't know if you

noticed it

did you notice anything weird about the

stories like the mix of stories in the

news today something strange

did anybody see it

i'm not the only one

yeah okay i think one of you saw two

yeah there were

you know normally let's say they're 25

stories in the news

i saw

out of the 25 or so stories i must have

seen

five or six and a 25

that were not about the trans community

and i thought to myself

what's going on

i i was a little confused because

normally what i expect would be all 25

stories

would have at least an angle

or you know they would frame it to be

about the trans community and today

i think

there i there had to be at least five or

six out of 25 that didn't have anything

to do with trans and

i don't know why

like there's no reason for it is it

is there a reason to leave it out of

those stories

because we've got it in you know we've

got a

elon musk

connection

because one of elon musk's children is

trans

and so through elon musk you connect

that to like everything else from

climate change to space to everything

else

um then there's you know the title ix

story

then there's a story about ellen page

bravely

inserting a trans character into one of

her

products

and i thought to myself

i

i don't see any trans element of the

ukraine war

which might be why it's

if you notice that the war in ukraine

started out to be it was like it's all

the headlines and it like shrunk and

drunk and drunk and today the news on

ukraine is going could be the same news

every day

we're trying to give them more resources

they need more weapons

russia made some gains but the plucky

ukrainians are holding out strong

but there's nothing about trans in that

whole story

and i'm thinking

that's probably why it disappeared

today the story is like ah there's a

city you never heard of looks like

russia is going to take a run for it and

that's it

now imagine if it had been a city full

of the trans community

imagine if there had been only one city

in ukraine

that was like the famous place where a

lot of people in the trans community

went to live

well this would be a different war

wouldn't it news would be all over that

and you know i'm mocking it but

it's hard to imagine anything that's a

smaller problem in the world than the

trans situation and let me be clear

if you're in the situation this might be

the biggest problem for you like as an

individual

but in terms of our national problems

isn't it among the smallest

if you were to make a list of all the

big challenges in america where would

where would the trans

situation be

it would be

very very far down right in terms of

national problems in terms of individual

problems that might be your top problem

or top issue i don't want to call it a

problem

all right

speaking of that

do you all know a famous podcaster ethan

klein i guess he associates more with

the left

and of course you know dr jordan

peterson who some say is associated

too much some say with the right

now i'm not sure that he would agree

with that characterization but that's

what people say about him

and there's a little dust up here

where jordan peterson went after ellen

page

because ellen had said in public i guess

that she was proud

that she had she was inserting a trans

character in the the umbrella academy or

something

some movie project

and

and i guess jordan peterson said

remember when pride was a sin

uh and then he says ellen page just had

her press removed by a criminal

physician

now the criminal part of course is

hyperbole

because it's not criminal if the justice

system does not consider it a crime

which it doesn't

so you should see criminal as you know

hyperbole

and meaning that he's

way far against it and maybe he thinks

you should think about making a criminal

i won't read his mind

but um

so that was the story

and i'm not giving you any opinion on

the story

so

it's opinion about the people who have

opinions on the story my opinion is i'm

i like to throw this in every now and

then because i can be a confusing

public voice

i'm very pro-trans

which is different from saying

therefore i support everything that the

trans community wants no no

i don't support anything that everybody

wants anybody wants

the left the right the trans community i

don't i don't support everything that

every anybody wants

but i support them completely

meaning that

people or people let people choose

let people be free

do people make the wrong choice

probably

i can't think of any domain in which

people don't make wrong choices

can you

but we don't let them not make those

choices

in most cases we still let them make the

choice

i don't think this is different

you know if when i look at it

well when you talk about children you're

really talking about the parents choice

right i'm not i'm not suggesting that

children make adult choices

that's that's really not even about

trans is it i mean it's hard to say

that's a trans issue

that's more of a parenting issue

so

then why is suicide illegal

don't ask me

um

you're talking about school not parents

rights

uh i don't think we disagree on any of

the the stuff about who has the rights

to do stuff i don't think that's worth

getting into we i don't think we

disagree on any of that

we're pretty clear about who has what

rights or who should have what rights

you know i think we all want parents to

have the dominant rights and all that

stuff

um

all right well the the trans issue is is

certainly interesting but let's let's

see what uh ethan lyon said so jordan

peterson made this provocative statement

remember when pride was a sin

now i don't know

i'm not going to try to interpret

exactly what he meant there

because he's smarter than i am

what would be dumber than trying to

interpret

um somebody's words when the person who

said it is smarter than you are

like that you need a little bit of

humility

to try to imagine what somebody is

thinking if they're smarter than you

and uh jordan peterson is smarter than

all of us

and

most of us not you of course not you but

he's smarter than i am

um

i i kind of have my own take on this uh

remember when pride was a sin i'm gonna

i'm gonna give it to you in my own

special way

i've always been

um

weirded out by anybody who is proud

about their situation for which

there's been some bigotry

now i'm a super

pro gay community in lgbtq

but i never understood why you would be

proud of

your sexual orientation i do understand

why you'd not be ashamed of it that part

makes perfect sense but why would you be

proud i feel like just breaking even

would be the the goal here

how about we just

don't feel bad about it

not feeling bad seems like the goal

to just not be bothered by it to ignore

it to make it no longer part of our

decision making that's the goal

as soon as you're proud about it you've

overcompensated

you've just taken one mistake and

replaced it with another one

this is why i've never understood uh

white supremacists

and i think even even uh yesterday i was

accused in public of being a white

supremacist i don't even understand that

here's why

why do i get credit for what strangers

did

because the the the white people who

invented things and

conquered countries and

did awesome things

none of them were me

i didn't do any of that i didn't i

didn't find any countries i didn't

invent anything

well i did but i mean nothing important

so why would i take pride

just as an example why would i take

pride in being white

it doesn't make sense

that's that's taking pride in someone

else's accomplishment

i'm not even entirely sure if i should

be proud about my own accomplishments

but you know i think it works well

if you're proud about what you

physically do in the world and if it's

good for the world that's probably a

positive thing you know you get a little

payoff for doing something good oh i

feel pride

it feels good

but if you're proud of strangers

accomplishments

what is wrong with you

what is wrong with you

to say that somebody is a white

supremacist

is

almost

giving them a pass isn't it it's almost

like giving them okay we will accept

we'll accept your interpretation of

things

and you know just disagree with it

that's not what's happening

what's happening is people are taking

credit for strangers accomplishments

let's just call it out

now if you're going to put a white hood

on and dance around in your white robes

in the kkk

you just told me that you get credit for

a stranger's work the work that

strangers did

because you're a similar

uh

you know

trace amount amount of genetic code

is is similar what

that's ridiculous

so i'm completely with jordan peterson

although my reasons for it might be

different i don't know

i can't be sure

but i don't think people should be

claiming pride for anything you

shouldn't be proud about being gay you

shouldn't be proud about being white you

shouldn't be proud about being black

it's just what you are

how about how about we just stop talking

about it

if it doesn't matter

because it doesn't

wasn't tesla

gay now somebody do me a uh

a fact check

i believe is rumored that isaac newton

was gay

leonardo da vinci

rumored to be

gay right

so

somebody says touring don't know about

that

tesla was not

somebody says tesla was not but anyway

whether they were or whether they were

not

da vinci was it da vinci or michelangelo

or both

i know

but certainly you could go into history

and you could find the most amazingly

accomplished

lgbtq people

should the lgbtq people take pride

and that there were so many famous

people and geniuses that were also

in their community and the answer is no

no you shouldn't

it's just a coincidence has nothing to

do with you

stop making it about you

if somebody was really smart 200 years

before you were born you don't get any

credit for that none i give you no

credit for somebody else sucking a

300 years ago sorry

sorry that's not on you

you did nothing

nope

nothing

you get no credit for that

so ethan klein

went after jordan peterson for going

after ellen page and ellen page doctor

and

ethan klein said

this is pretty

this is

quite a public fight

he says of jordan peterson he goes

jordan you have completely lost the plot

anything that was inspiring about you is

long gone you have yourself out

to the worst among us

the worst among us

now you are nothing more than a useful

idiot to the hordes of hateful bigots

you have forsaken any semblance of

decency shame on you twitter

no shame on you jordan peterson

to which i say

the worst among us who exactly is he

referring to

as the worst among us

i believe he's referring to the

political right

is he not

is he not referring to republicans in

general

as the worst among us

because i don't think that he's saying

jordan peterson

you took sides with let's say

the violent people in the

you know january 6 protest

i don't think he's saying that it looks

like he's saying that simply being

associated with the political right

is making you associate with the worst

among us that's how i read it i mean

again you don't know

what he was thinking when he wrote it

but the way i

i interpret it

is that ordinary republicans are quote

the worst among us

because i know he's not talking about

you know

the subset of republicans who do bad

things

because that wouldn't make sense

because there's a subset

of every group

who do terrible things

so i know he's not so dumb as to say

that the entire political right

is equal to whatever the small number of

bad characters is

just as i would not say the political

left

should be defined by the high percentage

of criminals

who are democrats

because most are not

the majority are not turns out

i think

i mean i think that's true

anyway

um this is the sort of talk ethan's

that uh

causes people to get hurt

i mean

when when i predicted that if

biden got elected republicans would be

hunted this is sort of the thing i had

in mind right this is related to that

if somebody of this size audience

talking about ethan here

can say that the political right is

quote the worst among us

without being specific that he's talking

about the worst among the worst

because the the claim is not really true

is it

i have seen jordan peterson being

embraced by the political right that

part's true

but i don't remember the kkk

interviewing him do you

oh no

i i don't remember

jordan peterson associating with

somebody who was some kind of a

bigot

like or at least objectively speaking

you know so everybody gets called the

bigot today

yeah

i don't know it's funny it's interesting

to watch this little uh dustup

but you know what it feels like

it feels like projection

doesn't it

because the democrats

are all some version of amber heard it

seems like

and i feel like johnny depp is some

version of the political right

in the weirdest way right because if you

look at his career and the way he

dresses and the way he lives

you're not thinking political right when

you see any of that

but

but you know the way we process things

we put it into buckets and amber heard

seems like she's she's a democrat

because the democrats seem to do this

cluster b thing

where

they do a terrible thing and then the

way they see the world is that you're

doing the terrible thing

and so

when ethan says that jordan is

associating with the worst among us

i wonder if he's worried that he's doing

that

because the democrats have some bad

people in their

in their category too

so i wonder if he wakes up and thinks i

don't know if i'm on the side of the

good people

and then suddenly he's making a public

attack against somebody who's who is

basically him

but the left left version of him

i don't know it looks a little like

projection

you can't say that i mean i'm not

qualified to make that determination

but

am i wrong that all democrats feel like

some version of amber heard

you know it's just the way we our brains

have been

let's say primed

yeah

so i would say uh

i'm going to agree with the comment i'm

seeing on locals i don't agree with

everything that jordan peterson says

but it's always interesting

it's always provocative and i think it's

always additive in the sense that he's

not trying to hurt people he's trying to

make things better and i think he does

um

feminism is all but dead now somebody

says there's a new york times column on

saying that feminism is all but dead i

don't

don't see that

do you

what do you disagree with him about

um

i've heard him

say some religious interpretations of

things

that i didn't quite

line up with

so mostly that um and i also think that

on the trans stuff

he's probably further than i am but i'd

have to i'd have to really see exactly

what he said i'm not entirely sure

that's true

um

what

concealed carry is unconstitutional

according to the supreme

court oh client has been getting heat

from his lgbt audience after recent

comments oh yeah

my criticism is vague that's true

yeah you know in general when

uh i'm talking about notable people

who've said lots of things about lots of

things i generally walk away with either

a sense that i've agreed with everything

or there's something i disagree with but

i don't i don't often remember exactly

what i disagree with

all right um

oh it's open carry open carry was

found unconstitutional what i don't know

i guess i have to look into that

kangaroo says i'm a trans person and i

find it insufferable how the community

injects itself into every issue

yeah you know

it's been successful

because the

lgb lgbtq community has done a great job

i mean

a great job i don't know who's done a

better job of

changing how people think and and

winning acceptance from from a bad place

but you know what's weird

i i feel as if we've had trans forever

and

i i don't remember it being a big deal

when you know 20 years ago

like i remember being in a seminar in

which the um instructor was trans

and it was you know it was a

conversation and then in the class

because it's sort of just interesting

you know it was someone who

uh appeared as a woman

but we were told was born with male

parts

i don't even know if that's true but it

was you know the talk of the class and

stuff but it was more it was more the

talk of the class because it was

interesting

i don't remember anybody

having some kind of a negative thought

about it

that you know you wouldn't take the

class or they were unqualified to teach

it or anything or anything it was just

it was just an interesting factoid

and now it's become something else

i don't know if things got better did

they it got so political

when before it was just oh well there's

somebody making a choice

that i've never made

like

it seemed like it was less of a big deal

and maybe that was better

i don't know

i don't know if it was better

somebody says it got far worse

all right well now somebody so a trans

member of the audience just said that

things got worse

i guess i would take your opinion on

that over my own

all right um

you're right in the 70s and 80s people

were transitioning yeah it just i just

feel like we went from more tolerant to

less tolerant because we talked about it

more or something i don't know

with enough confidence you can use any

bathroom you want

you know i don't know why this reminded

me of this but

do all of you know that my county in

california alameda county i think we're

the last place in the united states with

masks

it's that it's actually still

like they reinstituted it recently

because it was an uptick

is there any place else in the united

states with masks are required

except where i live

there's not right in the united states

am i i'm the only place in the united

states we have to wear a mask right

so

you should see what the compliance looks

like where i live

it's become funny

the employees are almost universally

wearing the masks below their nose

almost universally

no that's too much i'll

say i'll say at least half

i say half of the employees

are

mocking the requirement by wearing it

below their nose now if you come into a

business and and the employees are

wearing it below the nose are you going

to keep your mask on

no

so the enforcement is maybe

10

i would say 90 percent of the businesses

here have just said

okay so there's a there's a new rule

that we have to wear masks

and let me let me understand this

everyone else in the country maybe the

world i don't know

everyone else in the country they don't

have to wear a mask

but in my county just in my little

county you got to wear a mask just when

you go in the store

so

since this is such a good idea

i think i'll wear my mask

like that

and like everybody here is just doing

you masks now

it's like yeah i got a mask on because

it's a requirement oh and government

you

i got my mask on how about you are you

wearing a mask yep

i got my mask on

uh i'm not trying as hard as i used to

to comply

but

i'm kind of going through the uh going

through the motions

so i got my mask on it's not covering my

nose or my mouth

but i like to be a good citizen so i'm

wearing my mask

so that's

that's what it looks like to go into a

store in my county

the people are so done

the people are so done

with the masks that now it's just it's

like a big joke

right

and by the way i

i don't think i've been asked to put on

the mask

anywhere that is required so far

i have worn a mask without complaint

in medical

in medical buildings

because i just don't want that fight

like i'm not going to get in a fight

with medical professionals

over a medical question

it's just not where i'm going to take

the fight

but you know the grocery store they

don't care

the gr safeway my local safeway

they've obviously been instructed that

they're not going to talk to the

customers about anything related to

masks at all

all right

if it looks like i ran out of topics

today that's because i overslept

and

there wasn't much news today anyway did

i miss anything

jewel uh yeah there's a story about

jewel and what is the story that the

biden administration wants to get rid of

vaping as well as

nicotine

all right

so is there any other um

and the other topics that i

how often are you recognized by fans and

safeway that's a good question

i don't know

because i'm recognized in a different

way than other people are recognized

so i think i do get recognized fairly

often

uh because of the live stream

so when i was

you know just doing cartooning it was

rare to be recognized i think now

probably every time i go to safeway

people recognize me probably every time

but they don't often um come up to me if

they do

they're usually conservatives

and i may have told you this before but

if i'm at the gym and somebody wants to

say something nice about my work they

whisper it now

so people will come up to me and they'll

just say

i watch you a lot i watch your live

stream every day it's great i really

like it and but they won't say it so

other people can hear it

so i'm like i'm basically like there's

their secret pleasure

you know

uh is pleasant and a persuasive name for

a city

yes it is

true story

the name of my town is pleasanton like

pleasant owen

the town next to me

is livermore

liver

more

who wants more liver nobody

and

which which one has higher property

values

pleasanton

or

liver more

pleasant

yes for now

you lived in ruby hill you were

practically my neighbor

all right um

about the pope's retirement no but i

have an update from the pope

um if i didn't mention this

um

the pope

and this is sort of an update is opposed

to war

still

so

if i didn't cover that news

now you've heard it

um

your family thinks it's weird that i

watch the sip

how weird is your family

i mean if we were to have a competition

would your would i be weirder than your

family who thinks is weird to watch this

incredible content i don't know

i don't know tell your family

and i'm talking to you directly now

this is to the family

who thinks this is weird

not weird

this

is normal everything else is weird

all right i got nothing else to say i'm

just babbling now and uh unless you have

any weird questions

i like the weird ones

oh maybe maybe we'll do that

i i will answer the weirdest question

you have

does anybody have a weird question

how's the house breaking problem i

haven't had one recently

but

my neighborhood is so bristling with

video cameras now

you i don't think you could walk one

inch in my neighborhood without three

different security cameras being on you

we are so surveilled

here at least outdoors

do i have a safety room

maybe

let me just say what i've said before

i built my house

to keep me alive

in every possible way you know so as as

a place i can exercise

you know so it's built to keep me alive

even if there's a national natural

disaster my house is going to be the one

that survives it

it's the one that won't burn down and

even if the neighborhood burned down my

house wouldn't burn down in all

likelihood because it's like fireproof

to the max

so

i i'm always ready for everything

yeah i got bad plumbing this way

ah here's a question

why do you use it feels right as opposed

to seems right does it align with your

use of sexy as a compliment well i

wouldn't um

no i wouldn't equate those two things in

any way

i like feels right because it

feels right

communicates that you're not based on

reason

seems right

sounds like you've got a reason but it

feels right you're just saying ah that's

my instinct it just feels right

why do you like living so much

i don't

why would you think that i'm not sure

living is a good deal are you

have you ever had that thought

i mean i don't know what it feels like

to not be living but i assume it's just

you know not conscious so it can't be

bad

but if but if you're having a bad day

don't you ever think why am i even doing

this

what's the whole point of this

i i think it's somewhat irrational to

want to be alive and to

reproduce

but it feels good sometimes

just want to see what happened

that's a good answer i think that

curiosity

is a way to get out of fungs

here's your tip for the day that will

help some of you a lot do you like these

this this will be my tip that guarantees

that will help some of you not many but

some percentage

will be absolutely

your life

could be changed

and that's this when you're feeling

really really bad

and you've lost all interest and maybe

there's some good or bad things that are

going to happen to you and you're just

like ah

change your frame to curiosity

if if your frame is how do you feel

maybe you don't feel so good it's a bad

frame to live in

change your frame to

what the hell is going to happen

tomorrow

like if i made this change or if i said

this thing or i invited this person to

this thing what would happen

i mean just just change your frame to

curiosity

curiosity

is one of your most base instincts right

your your uh your operating system of

your body it operates on curiosity like

if you didn't have curiosity

you probably wouldn't do much

so it's a really fundamental part of you

is curiosity so it can absorb your

it can absorb your thinking and you can

you can put your mind through that frame

pretty easily

so watch how easily this works

let me tell you how i've used it when i

find myself in a funk

and everybody does right everybody's got

their bad week or two

um i say you know

if i if i hate living anyway

why don't i just mix it up a little bit

why don't i do something that would

either embarrass me or be funny

or at least i'll feel something like

i'll just feel something

and so i say all right what would happen

if i just did this thing that is so bold

nobody would do this thing now i'm not

talking about dangerous things i'm

talking about things that could be maybe

socially embarrassing

but if they worked out they'd be great

such as

you know asking out the most attractive

person you know

now how would that usually turn out well

you probably think not so well

but what if you were just curious

what would happen

i mean what if i did

what if i did put out this invitation

what if i did throw a party

what if i did

you know uh say yes to this thing what

if i did

it completely changes your

your life

uh there was one year during my first

marriage that just to change things up i

decided that i would say yes to

everything

i didn't want to tell anybody that i was

saying yes to everything because then

they take advantage but for about a year

no matter what people would say i'd say

yes

even though i desperately didn't want to

do it

just to see how it turned out because i

have this problem i don't know if some

of you do

that if somebody gives me an amazing

idea to like hey let's

go somewhere and do something

my first response is almost always the

same

that sounds like a lot of work

or

i don't i can't even imagine why that

would be fun

or

that's like a lot of work for a little

bit of benefit you know i have all these

thoughts

but then you do it and you enjoy it and

it adds to your life and you mess with

people and you had some fun and you had

some laughs so you kind of always wish

you did it

but my first instinct is always to find

a reason not to

so i took a year where i would just say

yes

and then just make it work

and

um

uh

it was actually

pretty cool

and pretty fun

but i wouldn't do it again

do you know why

because i ended up saying yes to things

that i really wish i hadn't

they didn't work out at all and i'm not

sure you know i'm not sure that i got

enough of a benefit out of it but it was

it was an exceptional experiment

and the the experiment was how well can

you predict

what you will enjoy

and the answer is i wasn't that good at

it

there were enough surprises

that i got some humility out of that

um

michael signer wrote a book about saying

yes really

yeah the white rule water rafting was an

example example in costa rica i had a

bad experience there

learned to fly yeah i don't think so

how often do you trim your toenails

whenever i notice that i need to

does it seem to you that your

fingernails and your toenails grow at

sometimes rapid rates and sometimes

slowly

i don't know if that's an imagination

is that real

like sometimes it seems like they'll

just be one day like what the hell

happened they just turned into a

werewolf overnight

is that's real so there really is

different

phases i don't know

maybe

well i would remind you again that if

you listen to this uh live stream for

all the

new content you'll probably be

disappointed

the best way to watch this

is like you're in a conversation but

you're

thinking about other things or

exercising or cleaning the house or

something

and i'm just that friendly voice that's

your friend in your head

and

how many of you

you know that's my favorite compliment

when people say they like my voice

because you know my story three and a

half years i couldn't speak

i had a rare disorder

and for those years my affirmations was

that i scott adams will speak perfectly

now there's no such thing as speaking

perfectly but

i do this every day you know the live

stream

and i do think that there's something

about practice that makes a difference

and i do think that i've

experimented with different voice

technique

and that at this point my voice is

actually quite powerful

it has an effect

how many of you

have had a reaction

specifically to the voice quality

that i have

tell me something about that are there

those of you who like listening just

because the way i

talk so let me tell you some of the

tricks you want to hear the tricks

because it's not natural in any way like

voice production is completely

artificial

so one of the things i do

and it took me

years to do this

is learn how to add variety to my voice

so that's the first thing

so

instead of this is the way i would

normally talk and if i thought i was

getting excited i'd go up like this but

really it was just the same thing just a

little bit higher it wasn't much variety

at all and i would just talk in the same

base like this and people would stop

listening after about a second because

you can't listen to something that

sounds like this

so

the first lesson was from the movie

network

where the

on-air personality was teaching somebody

how to make something sound interesting

and the secret is that you punch words

randomly

and it's the randomly part that blows

your mind

you're like randomly

shouldn't you punch the important words

yeah

doesn't doesn't seem to matter

i mean you could but it's the variety

that's really drawing people in

so when joe biden does his whisper thing

that everybody makes fun of

it totally works

it's just that he whispers things that

aren't important

if if he

if he made his whispering light up with

his also most important points you know

that were shocking or something that

would be better but he often says

ordinary things in a whisper it's a good

technique

now i don't know if you notice

uh because i'm conscious of it now but i

try to go up

and i try to go down

and i try to give you a lot of variety

but i also give you pauses

like that

because they drive you crazy don't they

when you're expecting something and then

you get the pause

like that

it just makes you crazy but it also

makes you pay attention so i mean i

don't pause that long usually

now in terms of the actual voice

production

the trick to use is the humming happy

birthday you've heard me say this before

if you hum happy birthday

so that it produces a hum and the mask

of your face is called you know sort of

the nose mouth part

that gets your voice production out of

your throat and larnix and and lungs

because you because if you produce your

voice in the lower part of your body

let's say from here down

if that's what's doing most of the work

it will sound tight and constrained

and people won't want to listen to it

but

if you hum happy birthday and then talk

directly after it in the same

in the same production way

you get something closer to a perfect

voice

i shall demonstrate

and now the next thing i say is almost

perfectly produced because i've moved my

production up to the top of my head and

when i move it up here it sounds more

confident

more clean

more

more sonically appropriate i don't know

in some way it just sounds better

but now let's see if

see if i can take it back

so i'm gonna bring my voice production

down now it's down here so you so now

now i'm gonna be talking on my it's hard

it's hard to actually do it wrong now

i've done it right for so many years

but there is there is a

technique and

part of the technique is to not be too

low

which is counter intuitive you would

think that a male voice

would sound better if it's lower

and there's something to that i mean we

do have some preference for that it

i think it tells you there's some

testosterone there or something

but far more important than

uh

how deep your voice is

is how confident it is and how clean it

is

if your voice is both clean and

confident

then

you sound

masculine enough

uh method acting tips

yeah and the way you breathe also will

change how you talk that's a

mel gibson trick

you should breathe the way you want to

be acting so if you were playing an

actor who was afraid of something

work on how you would breathe if you

were afraid of something and then when

you talk

you'll be talking in the way that a

person is afraid would talk because

you've

you've breathed that way so it just

puts you in the moment

you think the head chest voice

description is the opposite

i think if you look into it you'll find

out that i'm right

it does sound

i realize it sounds counterintuitive

but that's actually part of the point is

that it is counterintuitive

all right

uh any more secrets from behind the

curtain

uh i'm not going to tell you any more

secrets from behind the curtain i mean i

can't think of one that fits the fits

the need

but there is a secret

that is seeping out from behind the

curtain

and

i can see it but you can't see it yet

because there's a pattern that you

haven't noticed

there's a certain pattern that's

sneaking out

so you'll see it in some news i think

i've seen it in several news items

and so far nobody has connected the dots

if they ever do

it will be the biggest story

in the whole world but i don't

think it's ever going to happen

and the beauty of it is

that if you don't know the story

there's no amount of evidence of it that

you'll be able to put together you just

couldn't put it together

let's just say that a lot of the things

that happen in the world

uh

spring from the same source or sources

and it's just not obvious but someday it

will be some day it will be

am i still good good friends with the

psychic no i haven't talked to the

psychic in years

um

uh did your spasmodic dysphonia affect

the sound of your laugh

i mean it affected all of my sounds but

i don't think it improved it necessarily

you know not everybody laughs

did you know that

do you know people who don't laugh

a lot of them you don't really notice do

you

there are lots of people who don't

ever laugh

ever it's like not a thing in the same

way that maybe i don't have musical

appreciation

i think there are lots of people maybe a

third who don't have humor appreciation

and they don't ever laugh

how is that possible i don't know

i don't know

but i can tell you for sure i do i mean

i do humor for a living

and i can tell you that a third of the

public is only pretending to have a

sense of humor they're literally

pretending they don't have one

and

i don't know why i'm the first person to

notice

i think everybody else thought well

everybody's got a sense of humor

but maybe they're not laughing at this

thing but they would laugh at some other

thing

nope

nope

there are people who actually just don't

have a sense of humor and

they do they will sometimes laugh if

somebody falls in a puddle

right but that is really really

different that's

almost not in the same category of humor

it's more like a reaction to a

thing

uh you think the same thing with music

does some people pretend to like it but

they don't hear it the same way i think

you're right about that

same with food

i have no idea what a foodie tastes

because i'm not one

when i eat food it's like oh i like this

or i don't like it

but i have a feeling that people are

foodies

just have a whole different flavor

experience than i do so

i feel like

this is a good analogy so the way i am

to food is the way other people are to

humor

if you looked at me eating it would look

like i'm enjoying my food just like

every other foodie

but i'm not

i mean i assume i'm not

your cooking would change my mind maybe

it would

what's my favorite genre of music

well it's unfair to ask at the moment

because i'm

learning to play the drums

so i'm kind of focused on anything

that's got a good drum beat so at the

moment

it's hard to answer that question so

anything with a good drum beat

especially from the 70s

i'm going to like a lot

yeah rolling stones buddy rich

i don't buddy rich wasn't

i feel like he wasn't a drummer he was

more like a

magician or something

i mean i didn't like listening to buddy

rich but it was impressive how quickly

he could hit her drum i don't know

i'm completely unimpressed by him

allegedly you know top drummer in the

world or something

but he was mostly about just being fast

i think

all right

uh we foodies have a working sense of

smell so do i

my sense of smell came back

a few weeks ago

weirdly but my allergies also went away

let me ask let me ask this again because

how many of you

and i only want you to answer if both of

these are true so if you show some

restraint for a moment

how many of you have both of these

things happen to you

number one you got vaccinated any any

number of vaccinations and number two

you did not have allergies this season

when normally you always do

am i the only one

so i don't know that there's a

correlation

but i i got

vaccinated

and that i never had

spring allergies again it's only been

one year i guess

anybody else have that experience

i'm seeing some people say yes but i

think maybe it's just a low pollen

season where i am or something maybe

it's just that i don't know

yeah all right more no's and yeses

your allergies came back

but a number of people are saying

they're having their best year but i

think is anybody having let me let me

reverse the question

is anybody having a bad year an

unusually bad year with allergies go

is anybody having

yeah i think in my case

staying away from the sulphites was the

big change for me

all right

worst okay so a lot of you are having

worse years with allergies

all right all right so there's nothing

there probably

um

do you laugh at the show family guy

yeah some of the episodes of family guy

are just ridiculously funny

uh others are a little bit phoned in

um

how do pigeons know the same song

i don't know

do you talk with gotfeld every day

no not every day

but we communicate a lot

um

have i told you lately that i love you

you have not and i've noticed that

a lot of you have not told me lately

that you love me and i'm feeling that

because i love all of you so

so

are you supposed to love me back i know

it doesn't work that way have you ever

met mike judge no but he's

my judge holds a singular distinction in

my

professional life do you know what that

is

there's something that mike judge

did

that no one else has ever done since i

became the dilbert cartoonist meaning

since i became famous do you know what

that is

he would not return a phone call

he's the only one

i've never had anybody who wouldn't

return a phone call and tell him

you know one of the benefits of being

famous

is that you can contact other famous

people or just other people

and if you say who you are they'll like

oh

i'll definitely return that call because

i get to tell a story about

i talked to a famous person

who wouldn't return a phone call to a

famous person

you would right

wouldn't you

if somebody left a message and it was

somebody you'd heard of like actually a

famous person

and they said can you please call me

back here's my phone number

you would call him back

would you not

only one time in my entire

famous life that's you know maybe 25

years or so

in my famous life only one person has

refused or for whatever reason i don't

know if he refused

but only one person didn't return a call

it was mike judge

don't know why

i had a i had a professional question i

wanted to ask him

but i never got it answered

he didn't get the message no doubt it

i think he got the message

jim davis yeah i've talked to jim davis

a number of times jim davis is a great

guy

well one of the things that people don't

understand about the creator of garfield

jim davis

is that he had a i believe his degree

was in business

and so

it's no surprise that two of the people

who had business as a background i'm i

would be the other one

did better with their cartoons than

people who did not have a business

background

surprise

it's probably not a coincidence

probably makes a difference if you know

how to you know grow a thing if you know

how to turn a business into a business i

don't think it's a coincidence

that the two people with business

training did better in their their

cartoons i think it's part of the talent

stack

will california be great again

yes

yes

when's the last time you watched porn

see now that's the kind of question

that i was looking for

why did it take so long to ask me an

embarrassing question

now i'm not going to answer it

because i think there's some kind of

questions that

uh answering it

doesn't help anything but it might hurt

something

right it can't help me but it might hurt

me

so um

well let me give you an answer the

question

in all seriousness i've never seen porn

now i know a lot of you have

and and i hear it's good and i've been

thinking about trying it

um if i could figure out where it is

it's like on the internet or something

right

but a lot of you have watched porn and

uh seem to enjoy it and so i thought to

myself well i should check it out but i

don't need it i don't need it like you

do

did anybody believe that

did that sound

sound a little bit credible at all

no okay

so that's my official answer never done

it

never done it don't need it never will

unlike the rest of you

nobody's buying this at all

and i never smoke weed that's correct

all right that's all for now

and uh

i will talk to you

tomorrow

bye youtube