Episode 254 Scott Adams - Nuclear Power, Kanye, Cultural Gravity

but pom pom pom pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in here come on come on you know I can see all of you now thanks to the new upgrade on periscope I can actually see all of you hey how's it going now I can't really see you but for a moment there you thought I could didn't you have you ever considered that listening to my periscopes in the morning are like having a talkative friend who you're in a conversation with on Face.

Time but you don't have much to say so you just let your friend run on for a while it feels kind of like that doesn't it all right you know what time it is oh yes you do yes you do it's time for the simultaneous it grabbed your mug your cup your Chellis your glass your vessel full of liquids I like coffee you should like coffee too but if you don't another beverage will suffice for the simultaneous up Jamie it's time good stuff well it's a weird day in news it feels like the news went from being all the Trump centric to being nothing about Trump suddenly did you notice that I'm looking at CNN's homepage and I'm like where's all the Trump stuff it's like I guess we don't do Trump stories when everything's working out well so the news is so good for Trump that he's been erased from CNN they're not even going to talk about him this week all right so let's talk about some other things I'm not going to say much about the hurricane because I don't have anything to add to a natural disaster I hope we're ready I hope the people in the Panhandle I've taken all their precautions and gotten out if they need to but other than that there's not much to say about it let's talk about my pinned tweet so the tweet I pinned is my periscope I did a periscope yesterday afternoon if you haven't seen it with a persuasion lesson wrapped around explaining my app the the interface app in which you can immediately talk to an expert and I had said there wouldn't it be great if every time there's something in the news and the headlines somebody who's an expert in that topic could just log on to the app in case the media wants to find an expert so lately we've been talking about nuclear power there's a article in The Wall Street Journal long to talk about in a minute been at least two breakthroughs reported one breakthrough some bacteria that eats might eat nuclear waste they've actually had the bacteria that might neutralize nuclear waste which would be amazing there's also a breakthrough at MIT in reducing the heat that comes out into the reactors which has all kinds of cost and efficiency benefits apparently but wouldn't you like to talk to an expert it'd be great if somebody who is an expert on building nuclear power plants just logged on the app it's a free app and then anybody in the media who was looking for an expert could just search for nuclear now let's uh so I the thing that I keep saying about climate change is that the climate change experts tend to look at the costs of it but not the opportunity costs you know what happens to all the things you couldn't do because you spend all your money on this they also tend to leave out nuclear as an option and if it's true that climate change is going to just be the worst thing ever for the world no matter how much you hate nuclear power plants the worst case scenario is one of the melts down yeah maybe a couple of them melt down over time but isn't that way less bad depending on where you place these sites assuming you place them so that when they melt down if they melt down if we're using technology that even does melt down that it wouldn't be the biggest deal in the world it seems to me that's not even close how big a problem that would be a nuclear meltdown of a power plant especially a new one right if you built a new plant the odds of it melting down I think would be much lower because of the of what we've learned but it feels like the the risk of that would be so much less so somebody is saying Japan and I think that's the perfect example of what not to do Japan put their nuclear power plant in a place that was at risk for a tsunami they knew that that risk was there why don't we not do that somebody says thorium is a game-changer somebody other people say fission is not that far away maybe that's true so I'm reading this article in The Wall Street Journal I tweeted it you see you can see it in my Twitter feed if you want to read up on it where a Nobel laureate a Nobel prize-winning laureate says the same thing I said which is you're not really considering the opportunity costs and if you haven't if you haven't included them you have not analyzed it and if you do you come to the opposite conclusion the opposite conclusion that's a pretty bad mistake there you come to an opposite conclusion so my take on climate change is that the whether or not the problem is exactly what the climate scientists say I'm not really the one who can analyze that but what I can say is that the way we debate it is fraudulent because if we're ever talking about climate change and we're not talking about it's only the only practical solution which is to go nuts on nuclear and do it fast get the government involved reducing some regulations so we can build plants faster that sort of thing if we're not doing that we're not really taking climate change seriously so the weird thing about the climate change of folks is that their dream of a green world with green technologies you know like solar and wind by pushing climate change as the mecca as the fear factor that gets you that green technology they've done exactly the opposite of what I think they want what I think they want is a world with no no nuclear power but is also green but instead they're going to cause the opposite because if they alarm the world enough on climate science and I think they have so if the climate change fear gets high enough it kind of guarantees nuclear power because it's literally the only solution anybody has that would get you a reasonably fast solution let's talk about Kanye so I'm seeing a lot of people forwarding around on the Don Lemon show on CNN and Bakari sellers was an african-american pundit it was on there a lot and Bakari said some mean things about Kanye but one of the things he said was that his problem with Kanye is that this is Bakari sellers saying this about Kanye you're saying that his problem is that anti anti intellectualism isn't cool so he's sort of mocking Kanye for not doing his homework before getting involved in stuff and you know I tweeted that it probably that's the sort of thinking that gets Kanye elected in 2024 so let's talk about Kanye because wherever he is it just makes you think of all different topics you think about that think of how many things you think about when you think of Kanye it's like the it now it's this growing universe of things you think about because his his influence is just expanding like crazy and the first thing I thought about when he was accused of anti intellectualism is how does that I intellectualism work the intellectuals said to Hillary Clinton would be President they said the economy would fail they said that you know all of our allies would hate us trade would be bad that'd be nuclear war pretty much everything the intellectuals told us would happen including what Bakari sellers the pro intellectual pundit was predicting every one of them was wrong for the past three years who were the people who were right anti intellectuals anti intellectuals have been right about everything for about three years straight now I saw I suppose it depends how far you take your definition of anti intellectual if you take that all the way to dumb I don't know how right the dumb people were but I think even the dumb people the people were literally low IQ if you measure it here I'm not insulting I'm just saying that if you measure people's IQ there's high winds and low ones I think even the low IQ people were smarter than the intellectuals for the past three years maybe they were just lucky maybe they were just lucky but they weren't right about a lot of stuff so I got a I had a few feelings about this first of all calling Kanye until anti-intellectual is sort of part of the package of accusing him of being a unprepared celebrity as opposed to someone who's been you know chugging away in the in the government realm for years and I call that loser thing which might be the title of my new book loser think is a way of thinking that consistently gives you bad results and let's take it let's take the difference between the way Kanye apparently thinks I can't read his mind but we'll just look at what he does as an indication of what he thinks what Kanye does is he breaks out of his small field and he tries things for which he is totally unqualified for how qualified was Kanye before he became Kanye even Kanye wasn't qualified to be Kanye I mean in a sense that he had never been a famous rapper and then he became one you know is that even the right word or his hip-hop artist or just artist or just or just artist I guess and then he decides to be a designer what was his experience for being a designer nothing nothing and now he's one of the most successful designers what is his what is his experience for anything Kanye is not stopped by his lack of beginning knowledge so beginning knowledge is the key here how much knowledge did President Trump have about being president before he was president not much just like everybody else because nobody has practice being a president until they're the president how much does president Trump know about the job of being a president right now two years into it a lot he figured it out right he brought his own tools into the job and figured it out so who do you want the person who can figure it out a Trump Kanye lots of other people right people who are willing to change fields it's one thing to be a celebrity and just talking about politics and you know people don't have a lot of respect for celebrities who just talk but Kanye is not just talking he is literally getting ready to meet with Jared Kushner and with the president on one of the most intractable problems in the entire country which is how to put convicted you know ex-cons back to work had to reduce our prison population these are really hard problems and Kanye walks right into it because you know what's missing do you know why that's such a hard problem well one of the reasons probably is a lack of creativity in other words we probably don't have yet the right ideas to get us the right result or if we do have the right ideas and you know I know that Jared Kushner has some plans about reducing the prison population and putting people back to work if we have a good plan and we're having trouble selling it selling it selling it who would you want on your side to help you sell it Kanye freakin West now known as Yi or yeh is a gay or ye I don't know how to pronounce Yee so I guess yeh so if you're asking me who was being one of the most productive people in the country this week think about it yeh I'm still having a look here's my problem with saying yeh yeh feels like even though he's he's officially announced that's what he wants to be called I have trouble with it because I I associated it with people who know him personally because it seems like the people who have known him personally call him yeh for a long time and that to me I don't know him personally so feels like I know it just feels too personal but if that's what he wants so who's being one of the most productive citizens in the United States this week yeh right he's meeting with Jared he's bringing attention to the one of the most intractable problems in the world he's talking about bringing some manufacturing to Chicago his future his his hometown in future new town he's moving apparently who was bringing all that attention to the issue does all of that attention help Jared refine his ideas if he needs to probably probably you bring that much creativity into a topic and suddenly people start thinking of stuff it's contagious alright did it bring more attention to it which will help him sell it absolutely what did Bakari sellers do that was productive this week he criticized the most productive citizen in the nation now when I say he's the most productive citizen in the nation what I'm talking about is the fact he's not an elected politician right there are lots of elected people who are doing good work but as an unelected person who's doing more for the country this week like right in front of our eyes then yay he's done an unambiguously positive thing by bringing attention to a major problem and now of course when you're talking about politics and you talking about left and right and CNN and Fox News and all that Bakari sellers is on essentially he's on a team and he's criticizing Kanye who he's feeling is either not on his team or maybe more of a mega fan etc.

I don't think that's the case by the way but but he's criticizing him who do you see supporting Kanye the most what what identifiable group of people are most supportive of Kanye yay all right it's a trick question the people most supportive of yay as being you know a positive force in the world are white supremacist now I don't mean that literally I don't literally mean white supremacists are supporting yay what I mean is that Trump supporters and they've been branded of course as all a bunch of white supremacists so if you're on the Left how do you square the fact that there's a panel of black people criticizing yay every day on CNN and the people who are unambiguous ly positive about him is the the party that that panel of black people have branded as white supremacists how do they explain that well how do you and you square that how it because I if I look at my Twitter feed you know there's some people who don't like Gagne some do but unambiguously there's more positive than negative yeah how do you squared that if you're if you think all Trump supporters are white supremacists why are they so positive about about yay well I'll tell you because he's not against them he he doesn't he doesn't present a threat he presents more of an opportunity more of a hey this could be good yeah what's he bringing to the table I like I like new ideas all right but let me talk about something that might get me in a lot of trouble I'm developing a concept maybe somebody already has a name for it but I'm gonna give it a name I'm gonna call it cultural gravity cultural gravity meaning that if you are if you're a product of a particular culture no matter which culture that is and you want to rise rise above the average and be more successful in whatever way you measure that if you want to get out of your culture your culture has a certain gravity that's sort of sucking you back in right and that gravity works on a lot of levels it's what people say it's their history it's bias it's you know it's how much money in connections they have in that group there's the attitudes it's you know it's the family structure and all that but every culture has a different gravity and it feels to be and by the way what I'm gonna say now I first heard from African Americans so if I didn't tell you that first you'd say hey white boy why are you talking about things you don't know so as best I can understand it this is an argument made by very thoughtful african-american people who are trying to make a difference and the idea is that the black community has a high cultural gravity now by analogy you see it with this Bakari sellers and the u.s.

situation here yay is doing something that is unambiguously positive bringing attention to this serious intractable problem of you know prisoners and ex-cons and getting them jobs and putting them back into productive flow he's doing all that stuff this week and what is and what is a far less successful black man doing he's dragging him back he's trying to drag him back drag him back and you see this all over the place the number of times you see other black Americans trying to to sort of drag back black Americans who are either too white or they're not they're not playing the game the right way or they're doing something they don't like it just feels like there's a lot of cultural gravity compare that to let's say the Jewish culture and this is this will be obviously a stereotype so I'm not going to say this I'm not going to pretend this applies to every single person in in any of these groups so nothing I'm saying is universal but it seems to me that the the sort of the narrative the story the the stereotype for the Jewish community is you know why aren't you a doctor or marrying a doctor or are you a lawyer are you a professional now that's that's the opposite of cultural gravity that's almost like cultural propellant it's like if you want to rise above the average everybody's looking at you and say can we help what can we do to help you rise above the average if I talk about my my own experience being a white kid in a relatively low income country setting in upstate New York so it was very rural forty people in my graduating class ninety-seven percent white probably and when it was it became kind of clear even in my in my youth that I had the potential to maybe do something so for most of my school experience my teachers had sort of identified me early as somebody who might you might be able to you know do something and I had the opposite of cultural gravity I felt the culture lifting me I always felt that I always felt that the people around me who were primarily people like me you know white people who didn't have much money I felt support like an actual cultural support all the time I don't know if I ever felt anything different I can remember you know a little bit when I was in grade school people would call me a nerd or something they would call me a nerd because I had high grades but it was never really cruel it never bothered me like it never really felt like I was being bullied because it was always has always said with almost a complement element to it you know when somebody would say oh you yeah you know you Brainiac you you nerd it never was mean all right it was kidding maybe so yeah maybe there was some Envy in there but it never it never seemed to be designed to hold me back so I felt that my cultural my culture had no cultural gravity as soon as the you know the cord was cut and the cord was you know mighty youth so when you're young you can't go that far right because you're a kid you got to get through school and stuff but the moment the you know the string was cut on the balloon there was nothing stopping me I had no cultural gravity everybody seemed to be rooting for me within my cultural and I hear from smart african-american leaders that one of the biggest problems in the black community is kind of cultural gravity that's that's this sort of holding you back like it's and you see this with with Bakari sellers comment now I think this is a special case because it's politics and it wouldn't matter what color any of them were you know that the left is going to be against the right but it reminded me of this it felt like Bakari was holding Kanye back and and I saw a radio interview recently I forget who the DJ was but it was someone who knew Kanye from the old days and you know they they'd come up together knew him before he was super famous before he was famous at all actually and as they were talking during the interview I kept saying to myself I feel like he's trying to hold Kanye back he's not saying it but I can feel the cultural gravity because he kept saying stuff like why can't she be the old Kanye we like the old Kanye you know go back to the old way and I'm thinking to myself everything that that old friend of his was saying the person who was very identified with the culture there were literally friends back in the day everything he was saying felt like cultural gravity I don't know if his jealousy somebody somebody's saying jealousy I don't know if that's it that's the simple answer right it's simple to just say uh jealousy but why why did I not I didn't excited not experience any jealousy why why did my culture not produce any jealousy that I could register it was almost entirely you go I mean I feel there from my earliest my earliest experience that people were saying you know you go boy you do what you can do you know may it make us proud go forth don't you feel there was something very different about Kanye hell yeah so the comment there was don't I think there's something very different about Kanye yeah that's why we're talking about him he's about as different as you can get but the most distinguishing characteristic of him right now is he's made a stand against cultural gravity now he refers to it as a mental prison and I don't love prison analogies so it makes sense and it works for him and stuff but just personally prison isn't the analogy I want in my head but he is he is rejecting publicly and a great personal and professional risk he's rejecting cultural gravity he's looking to get bigger and to make more of a difference and to help more and and who's holding it back it's not white people you're not seeing a lot of you're not seeing a lot of Trump supporters say hey Kanye stop being stopped trying to be useful in a positive way to change society stop doing that with your anti intellectualism you know here white people saying that you're white people say go Kanye let's see what you can do let's you know knock it out let's see what you can do totally rooting for him you know not everybody's not everybody thinks he's the right person not everybody's rooting for him but it feels like white people are more more lifting and more supportive of his change of topics to more of a political political realm all right I don't know what to do about that by the way so first of all I don't know if it's true and secondly I don't know what to do about it if it is true so you know according to people who know what they're doing and have you know come out of those environments it's true but I can't have verify it from my own experience all right there was an article that poll was done one year after the me to movement going so it's been about a year of me too and one of the disturbing results is one that I predicted a year ago which is that executive males are are avoiding meetings with women so apparently there's a pretty big shift in behavior not a universal one but big enough to be problematic in which executive men are just trying to avoid contact with women and think about the enormity of that problem if you're a woman just just think about thinking about why you lose if you can't go to lunch with your CEO just the two of you because a guy can do that any guy can go to lunch with the male CEO but now I don't know if the CEO is going to say he can go to lunch with let's say a youngish woman I don't think he can right and I asked myself if I were a CEO of a major corporation would end and let's say an assistant vice president a woman said hey can we go to lunch to talk about X would I do it or would I have to invite another man or or at least invite another person I probably have to invite a man but then I think oh no if I invite the man he's gonna say something sexist and then I'm gonna get dragged into it so I can't even invite another man to be sort of my chaperone so I have to invite another woman and I think now it's gonna be two women if they team up and say I did something I'm dead because now there's there's a victim and a witness that's worse so you're the CEO you're saying what's the only safe thing to do the only safe thing to do is be busy or to make it a larger group but you're not going to get the same bonding and networking as a one-on-one lunch would be so I don't know if the trade-off is good or bad because you know the me2 movement clearly is producing some amount of positive you know awareness is some amount of positive behavior change but there's clearly a cost I don't know how to weigh them but we should be aware of them it doesn't mean we need to go backwards we just need to be aware of it all right one more comment about anti intellectualism because it's too delicious the the people who would I guess say they're Pro intellectualism Bakari sellers maybe some other people on CNN haven't they been wrong about everything for three years who are the people who have been right about everything for three years anti the anti intellectual ISM people the the Trump supporters have been largely right about everything for about three years trends straight at what point do you notice when do you notice so generally speaking I favor people who jump into fields that they're not experienced in and try to figure it out so I'm very very permissive and forgiving of those people because they're the ones who changed the world right you want the person who who hasn't done it before but is a creative creative force of nature to get in there and shake the box and let us all watch and just see what comes out of it I don't I don't I don't think we should be against science of course but that's not what that's not what people mean I think when they say anti intellectualism they'd like to mean that but I don't think they do take for example with climate change what do the intellectuals say about climate change pretty much the intellectuals say the same thing all right as a majority as a majority the intellectuals say the same thing about climate change it's a big problem and we better act aggressively and spend trillions of dollars what do the anti intellectual will say they say you're forgetting the costs and the benefits if you haven't included nuclear power in the calculation you haven't really even considered the problem right who is smarter in the example I just gave you the intellectuals who completely ignore the costs and the benefits of climate science and just look at the costs and the costs are not even well calculated they're just sort of a wild guess supported by horoscope like models that have a big range the anti intellectuals are saying hey it looks like you're leaving out some big things like how much it would affect the economy how much it would cost to remediate problems caused by climate science versus making them go away in the first place how long it would take the benefits of nuclear power versus the cost of nuclear power technological innovation who is saying all those things all the smart stuff is coming from the anti intellectuals I'm not wrong about that Emily so that's the irony is that the smart people are the anti intellectuals in so many cases not every case you know there's still plenty of people who you know believe in the Flat Earth and there are plenty of people who who have crazy ideas and don't trust science when they should and you know there's plenty of craziness on both sides I'm not saying that I'm not saying dumb people all join the same political party that's not the case I'm just looking at your comments somebody says it's urban versus rural baby I mean it is certainly that also science advances one death at a time somebody said I don't know who said it but it's kind of it's a cool thing Candace Owens what about Candace Owens is there a question attached to that every solution comes with a new set of problems that's probably true somebody says vaccines are you don't know if you're saying that not to change the subject too much but let me make the general point whoever says that that vaccines are is not really smart whoever says vaccines are definitely good and there's no reason to be concerned not smart the smart range is somewhere in between those two extremes which is and you know who has the smartest view on this I hate to tell you but the smartest opinion I've ever heard on vaccines in terms of the risks versus the benefit that was expressed by President Trump and if you remember what Trump says about vaccines he says that they have been tested individually now this isn't his own theory he's obviously heard it somewhere it's a it's a popular way of thinking the idea goes that we have tested each vaccine individually and that individually they look like good ideas but what we haven't tested is what happens if you give a number of vaccines to the same person so that's what Trump said that there's a risk which has not been analyzed to which I thought to myself is that anti intellectualism is it anti the thing were the very thing we're doing is the thing that's never been tested which is what happens when you combine a bunch of vaccines in the same person now I'm not going to tell you that that's bad because I've never studied it and I don't have any skill to study it but I do agree it hasn't been studied and if it's true that you should study one vaccine you know if a new vaccine comes in if it's true that the FDA should study that vaccine isn't it also true they should study it in combination because what are what are you know drug interactions if not that we test drugs one at a time and then when they interact with another drug we say oh whoops it looks like this this aspirin doesn't work with that other stuff but we didn't test that because it would be impossible to test every drug with every other combination of drugs it would be too many combinations so we just kind of put that drug out there tested in in isolation largely in isolation and then when it kills somebody or gives them a side effect you say what else were you taking well we better put this in the database maybe we've got a problem here so the president has the most realistic view in this which is why would you trust something this important that hasn't been tested is that anti intellectual I don't know you know you might say politically is smart because he has it both ways it's pro science and it's also slightly anti vaccine without totally committing to it so politically is brilliant but it's also perfectly a common sensical point of view and and by the way I had never heard that point of view I had heard it in a different realm I had a friend number of years ago who was trying to convince me to eat more organic food and to avoid anything in a package anything that has any kind of additives and my opinion had always been all of this stuff has been tested right all of these additives have been tested there's no reason to think that you know just because my my jelly has a food preservative in it that it's gonna kill me because it's all been tested and my friend said this they haven't tested it all together and I thought how the hell did I not ever think of that before so her point was this that if the only thing you ate they had an additive was that jelly that you have you know once a week probably wouldn't be a problem because your body could easily handle whatever a little little extra thing it was adding to it but if everything you eat has an additive it doesn't matter that every one of those things has been tested in isolation because what they haven't tested is what happens we when you give yourself a whole bunch of different additives from different sources of different types I don't know does it hurt you somebody says you look great for 65 I'm 61 damn it but that was funny they do test vaccines altogether I don't believe that there's no way that they test vaccines altogether because you couldn't I don't think you could test them on humans like that there's a limit to how much how much you can really test about the combinations yeah and the test is children that makes it harder why is the lifespan in America so much higher than before I believe it stalled didn't I'm not telling you the vaccines don't work I'm not an anti-vaxxer I'm an anti-intellectual I'm not an anti-vaxxer of an anti-intellectual meaning that meaning that I don't know how would I know all right well I don't know much about this category if the additives and how dangerous they are in the vaccines and how dangerous they are so I'm going to end here and I'm going to sign out and I'll talk to you later bye

but pom pom pom pom pom pom pom hey

everybody come on in here come on come

on

you know I can see all of you now thanks

to the new upgrade on periscope I can

actually see all of you hey how's it

going now I can't really see you but for

a moment there you thought I could

didn't you have you ever considered that

listening to my periscopes in the

morning are like having a talkative

friend who you're in a conversation with

on FaceTime but you don't have much to

say so you just let your friend

run on for a while it feels kind of like

that doesn't it all right you know what

time it is oh yes you do

yes you do it's time for the

simultaneous it grabbed your mug your

cup your Chellis your glass your vessel

full of liquids I like coffee

you should like coffee too but if you

don't another beverage will suffice for

the simultaneous up

Jamie it's time good stuff well it's a

weird day in news it feels like the news

went from being all the Trump centric to

being nothing about Trump suddenly did

you notice that I'm looking at CNN's

homepage and I'm like where's all the

Trump stuff it's like I guess we don't

do Trump stories when everything's

working out well so the news is so good

for Trump that he's been erased from CNN

they're not even going to talk about him

this week all right so let's talk about

some other things I'm not going to say

much about the hurricane because I don't

have anything to add to a natural

disaster

I hope we're ready I hope the people in

the Panhandle I've taken all their

precautions and gotten out

if they need to but other than that

there's not much to say about it let's

talk about my pinned tweet so the tweet

I pinned is my periscope I did a

periscope yesterday afternoon if you

haven't seen it with a persuasion lesson

wrapped around explaining my app the the

interface app in which you can

immediately talk to an expert and I had

said there wouldn't it be great if every

time there's something in the news and

the headlines somebody who's an expert

in that topic could just log on to the

app in case the media wants to find an

expert so lately we've been talking

about nuclear power there's a article in

The Wall Street Journal long to talk

about in a minute been at least two

breakthroughs reported one breakthrough

some bacteria that eats might eat

nuclear waste they've actually had the

bacteria that might neutralize nuclear

waste which would be amazing

there's also a breakthrough at MIT in

reducing the heat that comes out into

the reactors which has all kinds of cost

and efficiency benefits apparently but

wouldn't you like to talk to an expert

it'd be great if somebody who is an

expert on building nuclear power plants

just logged on the app it's a free app

and then anybody in the media who was

looking for an expert could just search

for nuclear now let's uh so I the thing

that I keep saying about climate change

is that the climate change experts tend

to look at the costs of it but not the

opportunity costs you know what happens

to all the things you couldn't do

because you spend all your money on this

they also tend to leave out nuclear as

an option and if it's true that climate

change is going to just be the worst

thing ever for the world no matter how

much you hate nuclear power plants the

worst case scenario is one of the melts

down yeah maybe a couple of them melt

down over time but isn't that way less

bad depending on where you place these

sites assuming you place them

so that when they melt down if they melt

down if we're using technology that even

does melt down that it wouldn't be the

biggest deal in the world it seems to me

that's not even close how big a problem

that would be a nuclear meltdown of a

power plant especially a new one right

if you built a new plant the odds of it

melting down I think would be much lower

because of the of what we've learned but

it feels like the the risk of that would

be so much less so somebody is saying

Japan and I think that's the perfect

example of what not to do Japan put

their nuclear power plant in a place

that was at risk for a tsunami they knew

that that risk was there why don't we

not do that somebody says thorium is a

game-changer somebody other people say

fission is not that far away maybe

that's true so I'm reading this article

in The Wall Street Journal I tweeted it

you see you can see it in my Twitter

feed if you want to read up on it where

a Nobel laureate a Nobel prize-winning

laureate says the same thing I said

which is you're not really considering

the opportunity costs and if you haven't

if you haven't included them you have

not analyzed it and if you do you come

to the opposite conclusion the opposite

conclusion that's a pretty bad mistake

there you come to an opposite conclusion

so my take on climate change is that the

whether or not the problem is exactly

what the climate scientists say I'm not

really the one who can analyze that but

what I can say is that the way we debate

it is fraudulent because if we're ever

talking about climate change and we're

not talking about it's only the only

practical solution which is to go nuts

on nuclear and do it fast get the

government involved reducing some

regulations so we can build plants

faster that sort of thing if we're not

doing that we're not really taking

climate change seriously so the weird

thing about the climate change of folks

is that their dream of a green world

with green technologies you know like

solar and wind by pushing climate change

as the mecca as the fear factor that

gets you that green technology they've

done exactly the opposite of what I

think they want what I think they want

is a world with no no nuclear power but

is also green but instead they're going

to cause the opposite because if they

alarm the world enough on climate

science and I think they have so if the

climate change fear gets high enough it

kind of guarantees nuclear power because

it's literally the only solution anybody

has that would get you a reasonably fast

solution let's talk about Kanye so I'm

seeing a lot of people forwarding around

on the Don Lemon show on CNN and Bakari

sellers was an african-american pundit

it was on there a lot and Bakari said

some mean things about Kanye but one of

the things he said was that his problem

with Kanye is that this is Bakari

sellers saying this about Kanye you're

saying that his problem is that anti

anti intellectualism isn't cool so he's

sort of mocking Kanye for not doing his

homework before getting involved in

stuff and you know I tweeted that it

probably that's the sort of thinking

that gets Kanye elected in 2024 so let's

talk about Kanye because wherever he is

it just makes you think of all different

topics you think about that think of how

many things you think about when you

think of Kanye it's like the it now it's

this growing universe of things you

think about because his his influence is

just expanding like crazy and the first

thing I thought about when he was

accused of anti intellectualism is how

does that I intellectualism work

the intellectuals said to Hillary

Clinton would be President

they said the economy would fail they

said that you know all of our allies

would hate us trade would be bad

that'd be nuclear war pretty much

everything the intellectuals told us

would happen

including what Bakari sellers the pro

intellectual pundit was predicting every

one of them was wrong for the past three

years who were the people who were right

anti intellectuals anti intellectuals

have been right about everything for

about three years straight now I saw I

suppose it depends how far you take your

definition of anti intellectual if you

take that all the way to dumb

I don't know how right the dumb people

were but I think even the dumb people

the people were literally low IQ if you

measure it here I'm not insulting I'm

just saying that if you measure people's

IQ there's high winds and low ones I

think even the low IQ people were

smarter than the intellectuals for the

past three years maybe they were just

lucky maybe they were just lucky but

they weren't right about a lot of stuff

so I got a I had a few feelings about

this first of all calling Kanye until

anti-intellectual is sort of part of the

package of accusing him of being a

unprepared celebrity as opposed to

someone who's been you know chugging

away in the in the government realm for

years and I call that loser thing which

might be the title of my new book loser

think is a way of thinking that

consistently gives you bad results and

let's take it let's take the difference

between the way Kanye apparently thinks

I can't read his mind but we'll just

look at what he does as an indication of

what he thinks what Kanye does is he

breaks out of his small field and he

tries things for which he is totally

unqualified for

how qualified was Kanye before he became

Kanye even Kanye wasn't qualified to be

Kanye I mean in a sense that he had

never been a famous rapper and then he

became one you know is that even the

right word or his hip-hop artist or just

artist or just or just artist I guess

and then he decides to be a designer

what was his experience for being a

designer nothing nothing and now he's

one of the most successful designers

what is his what is his experience for

anything Kanye is not stopped by his

lack of beginning knowledge so beginning

knowledge is the key here how much

knowledge did President Trump have about

being president before he was president

not much just like everybody else

because nobody has practice being a

president until they're the president

how much does president Trump know about

the job of being a president right now

two years into it a lot he figured it

out right

he brought his own tools into the job

and figured it out so who do you want

the person who can figure it out a Trump

Kanye lots of other people right people

who are willing to change fields it's

one thing to be a celebrity and just

talking about politics and you know

people don't have a lot of respect for

celebrities who just talk but Kanye is

not just talking he is literally getting

ready to meet with Jared Kushner and

with the president on one of the most

intractable problems in the entire

country which is how to put convicted

you know ex-cons back to work had to

reduce our prison population these are

really hard problems and Kanye walks

right into it because you know what's

missing

do you know why that's such a hard

problem well one of the reasons probably

is a lack of creativity in other words

we probably don't have yet the right

ideas to get us the right result or if

we do have the right ideas and you know

I know that Jared Kushner has some plans

about reducing the prison population and

putting people back to work if we have a

good plan and we're having trouble

selling it selling it selling it who

would you want on your side to help you

sell it

Kanye freakin West now known as Yi or

yeh is a gay or ye I don't know how to

pronounce Yee

so I guess yeh so if you're asking me

who was being one of the most productive

people in the country this week think

about it

yeh I'm still having a look here's my

problem with saying yeh yeh feels like

even though he's he's officially

announced that's what he wants to be

called I have trouble with it because I

I associated it with people who know him

personally because it seems like the

people who have known him personally

call him yeh for a long time and that to

me I don't know him personally so feels

like I know it just feels too personal

but if that's what he wants

so who's being one of the most

productive citizens in the United States

this week yeh right he's meeting with

Jared he's bringing attention to the one

of the most intractable problems in the

world he's talking about bringing some

manufacturing to Chicago his future his

his hometown in future new town he's

moving apparently who was bringing all

that attention to the issue does all of

that attention help Jared refine his

ideas if he needs to probably probably

you bring that much creativity into a

topic and suddenly people start thinking

of stuff it's contagious

alright did it bring more attention to

it which will help him sell it

absolutely

what did Bakari sellers do that was

productive this week

he criticized the most productive

citizen in the nation now when I say

he's the most productive citizen in the

nation what I'm talking about is the

fact he's not an elected politician

right there are lots of elected people

who are doing good work but as an

unelected person who's doing more for

the country this week like right in

front of our eyes

then yay he's done an unambiguously

positive thing by bringing attention to

a major problem and now of course when

you're talking about politics and you

talking about left and right and CNN and

Fox News and all that Bakari sellers is

on essentially he's on a team and he's

criticizing Kanye who he's feeling is

either not on his team or maybe more of

a mega fan etc I don't think that's the

case by the way but but he's criticizing

him who do you see supporting Kanye the

most what what identifiable group of

people are most supportive of Kanye yay

all right it's a trick question the

people most supportive of yay as being

you know a positive force in the world

are white supremacist now I don't mean

that literally

I don't literally mean white

supremacists are supporting yay

what I mean is that Trump supporters and

they've been branded of course as all a

bunch of white supremacists

so if you're on the Left how do you

square the fact that there's a panel of

black people criticizing yay every day

on CNN and the people who are

unambiguous ly positive about him is the

the party that that panel of black

people have branded as white

supremacists

how do they explain that well how do you

and you square that how it because I if

I look at my Twitter feed you know

there's some people who don't like Gagne

some do but unambiguously there's more

positive than negative yeah how do you

squared that if you're if you think all

Trump supporters are white supremacists

why are they so positive about about yay

well I'll tell you because he's not

against them he he doesn't he doesn't

present a threat he presents more of an

opportunity more of a hey this could be

good yeah what's he bringing to the

table I like I like new ideas all right

but let me talk about something that

might get me in a lot of trouble I'm

developing a concept maybe somebody

already has a name for it but I'm gonna

give it a name I'm gonna call it

cultural gravity cultural gravity

meaning that if you are if you're a

product of a particular culture no

matter which culture that is and you

want to rise rise above the average and

be more successful in whatever way you

measure that if you want to get out of

your culture your culture has a certain

gravity that's sort of sucking you back

in right and that gravity works on a lot

of levels it's what people say it's

their history it's bias it's you know

it's how much money in connections they

have in that group there's the attitudes

it's you know it's the family structure

and all that but every culture has a

different gravity and it feels to be and

by the way what I'm gonna say now I

first heard from African Americans so if

I didn't tell you that first you'd say

hey white boy why are you talking about

things you don't know so as best I can

understand it this is an argument made

by very thoughtful african-american

people who are trying to make a

difference and the idea is that the

black community has a high cultural

gravity now by analogy you see it with

this Bakari sellers and

the u.s. situation here yay is doing

something that is unambiguously positive

bringing attention to this serious

intractable problem of you know

prisoners and ex-cons and getting them

jobs and putting them back into

productive flow he's doing all that

stuff this week and what is and what is

a far less successful black man doing

he's dragging him back he's trying to

drag him back drag him back and you see

this all over the place the number of

times you see other black Americans

trying to to sort of drag back black

Americans who are either too white or

they're not they're not playing the game

the right way or they're doing something

they don't like it just feels like

there's a lot of cultural gravity

compare that to let's say the Jewish

culture and this is this will be

obviously a stereotype so I'm not going

to say this I'm not going to pretend

this applies to every single person in

in any of these groups so nothing I'm

saying is universal but it seems to me

that the the sort of the narrative the

story the the stereotype for the Jewish

community is you know why aren't you a

doctor or marrying a doctor or are you a

lawyer are you a professional now that's

that's the opposite of cultural gravity

that's almost like cultural propellant

it's like if you want to rise above the

average everybody's looking at you and

say can we help what can we do to help

you rise above the average if I talk

about my my own experience being a white

kid in a relatively low income country

setting in upstate New York so it was

very rural forty people in my graduating

class ninety-seven percent white

probably and when it was it became kind

of clear even in my in my youth that I

had the potential to

maybe do something so for most of my

school experience my teachers had sort

of identified me early as somebody who

might you might be able to you know do

something and I had the opposite of

cultural gravity

I felt the culture lifting me I always

felt that I always felt that the people

around me who were primarily people like

me you know white people who didn't have

much money

I felt support like an actual cultural

support all the time I don't know if I

ever felt anything different I can

remember you know a little bit when I

was in grade school people would call me

a nerd or something they would call me a

nerd because I had high grades but it

was never really cruel it never bothered

me like it never really felt like I was

being bullied because it was always has

always said with almost a complement

element to it you know when somebody

would say oh you yeah you know you

Brainiac you you nerd it never was mean

all right it was kidding maybe so yeah

maybe there was some Envy in there but

it never it never seemed to be designed

to hold me back

so I felt that my cultural my culture

had no cultural gravity as soon as the

you know the cord was cut and the cord

was you know mighty youth so when you're

young you can't go that far right

because you're a kid you got to get

through school and stuff but the moment

the you know the string was cut on the

balloon there was nothing stopping me I

had no cultural gravity everybody seemed

to be rooting for me within my cultural

and I hear from smart african-american

leaders that one of the biggest problems

in the black community is

kind of cultural gravity that's that's

this sort of holding you back like it's

and you see this with with Bakari

sellers comment now I think this is a

special case because it's politics and

it wouldn't matter what color any of

them were you know that the left is

going to be against the right but it

reminded me of this it felt like Bakari

was holding Kanye back and and I saw a

radio interview recently I forget who

the DJ was but it was someone who knew

Kanye from the old days and you know

they they'd come up together knew him

before he was super famous before he was

famous at all actually

and as they were talking during the

interview I kept saying to myself I feel

like he's trying to hold Kanye back he's

not saying it but I can feel the

cultural gravity because he kept saying

stuff like why can't she be the old

Kanye we like the old Kanye you know go

back to the old way and I'm thinking to

myself everything that that old friend

of his was saying the person who was

very identified with the culture there

were literally friends back in the day

everything he was saying

felt like cultural gravity I don't know

if his jealousy somebody somebody's

saying jealousy I don't know if that's

it that's the simple answer right it's

simple to just say uh jealousy but why

why did I not I didn't excited not

experience any jealousy why why did my

culture not produce any jealousy that I

could register it was almost entirely

you go I mean I feel there from my

earliest my earliest experience that

people were saying you know you go boy

you do what you can do you know may it

make us proud go forth don't you feel

there was something very different about

Kanye

hell yeah so the comment there was don't

I think there's something very different

about Kanye

yeah that's why we're talking about him

he's about as different as you can get

but the most distinguishing

characteristic of him right now is he's

made a stand against cultural gravity

now he refers to it as a mental prison

and I don't love prison analogies so it

makes sense and it works for him and

stuff but just personally prison isn't

the analogy I want in my head but he is

he is rejecting publicly and a great

personal and professional risk he's

rejecting cultural gravity he's looking

to get bigger and to make more of a

difference and to help more and and

who's holding it back it's not white

people you're not seeing a lot of you're

not seeing a lot of Trump supporters say

hey Kanye stop being stopped trying to

be useful in a positive way to change

society stop doing that with your anti

intellectualism you know here white

people saying that you're white people

say go Kanye let's see what you can do

let's you know knock it out let's see

what you can do totally rooting for him

you know not everybody's not everybody

thinks he's the right person not

everybody's rooting for him but it feels

like white people are more more lifting

and more supportive of his change of

topics to more of a political political

realm all right I don't know what to do

about that by the way so first of all I

don't know if it's true and secondly I

don't know what to do about it if it is

true so you know according to people who

know what they're doing and have you

know come out of those environments it's

true but I can't have verify it from my

own experience all right there was an

article that poll was done one year

after the me to movement going so it's

been about a year of me too and

one of the disturbing results is one

that I predicted a year ago which is

that executive males are are avoiding

meetings with women so apparently

there's a pretty big shift in behavior

not a universal one but big enough to be

problematic in which executive men are

just trying to avoid contact with women

and think about the enormity of that

problem if you're a woman just just

think about thinking about why you lose

if you can't go to lunch with your CEO

just the two of you because a guy can do

that any guy can go to lunch with the

male CEO but now I don't know if the CEO

is going to say he can go to lunch with

let's say a youngish woman I don't think

he can right and I asked myself if I

were a CEO of a major corporation would

end and let's say an assistant vice

president a woman said hey can we go to

lunch to talk about X would I do it or

would I have to invite another man or or

at least invite another person I

probably have to invite a man but then I

think oh no if I invite the man he's

gonna say something sexist and then I'm

gonna get dragged into it so I can't

even invite another man to be sort of my

chaperone so I have to invite another

woman and I think now it's gonna be two

women if they team up and say I did

something I'm dead because now there's

there's a victim and a witness that's

worse so you're the CEO you're saying

what's the only safe thing to do

the only safe thing to do is be busy or

to make it a larger group but you're not

going to get the same bonding and

networking as a one-on-one lunch would

be so I don't know if the trade-off is

good or bad because you know the me2

movement clearly is producing some

amount of positive

you know awareness is some amount of

positive behavior change but there's

clearly a cost I don't know how to weigh

them but we should be aware of them it

doesn't mean we need to go backwards we

just need to be aware of it all right

one more comment about anti

intellectualism because it's too

delicious the the people who would I

guess say they're Pro intellectualism

Bakari sellers maybe some other people

on CNN haven't they been wrong about

everything for three years who are the

people who have been right about

everything for three years anti the anti

intellectual ISM people the the Trump

supporters have been largely right about

everything for about three years trends

straight at what point do you notice

when do you notice so generally speaking

I favor people who jump into fields that

they're not experienced in and try to

figure it out so I'm very very

permissive and forgiving of those people

because they're the ones who changed the

world right you want the person who who

hasn't done it before

but is a creative creative force of

nature to get in there and shake the box

and let us all watch and just see what

comes out of it

I don't I don't I don't think we should

be against science of course but that's

not what that's not what people mean I

think when they say anti intellectualism

they'd like to mean that but I don't

think they do take for example with

climate change what do the intellectuals

say about climate change pretty much the

intellectuals say the same thing all

right as a majority as a majority the

intellectuals say the same thing about

climate change it's a big problem and we

better act aggressively and spend

trillions of dollars what do the anti

intellectual will say they say you're

forgetting the costs and the benefits

if you haven't included nuclear power in

the calculation you haven't really even

considered the problem right who is

smarter in the example I just gave you

the intellectuals who completely ignore

the costs and the benefits of climate

science and just look at the costs and

the costs are not even well calculated

they're just sort of a wild guess

supported by horoscope like models that

have a big range the anti intellectuals

are saying hey it looks like you're

leaving out some big things like how

much it would affect the economy how

much it would cost to remediate problems

caused by climate science versus making

them go away in the first place how long

it would take the benefits of nuclear

power versus the cost of nuclear power

technological innovation who is saying

all those things all the smart stuff is

coming from the anti intellectuals I'm

not wrong about that Emily so that's the

irony is that the smart people are the

anti intellectuals in so many cases not

every case you know there's still plenty

of people who you know believe in the

Flat Earth and there are plenty of

people who who have crazy ideas and

don't trust science when they should and

you know there's plenty of craziness on

both sides I'm not saying that I'm not

saying dumb people all join the same

political party that's not the case

I'm just looking at your comments

somebody says it's urban versus rural

baby I mean it is certainly that also

science advances one death at a time

somebody said I don't know who said it

but it's kind of it's a cool thing

Candace Owens what about Candace Owens

is there a question attached to that

every solution comes with a new set of

problems that's probably true

somebody says vaccines are you

don't know if you're saying that not to

change the subject too much but let me

make the general point whoever says that

that vaccines are is not really

smart whoever says vaccines are

definitely good and there's no reason to

be concerned not smart the smart range

is somewhere in between those two

extremes which is and you know who has

the smartest view on this I hate to tell

you but the smartest opinion I've ever

heard on vaccines in terms of the risks

versus the benefit that was expressed by

President Trump and if you remember what

Trump says about vaccines he says that

they have been tested individually now

this isn't his own theory he's obviously

heard it somewhere it's a it's a popular

way of thinking the idea goes that we

have tested each vaccine individually

and that individually they look like

good ideas but what we haven't tested is

what happens if you give a number of

vaccines to the same person so that's

what Trump said that there's a risk

which has not been analyzed to which I

thought to myself is that anti

intellectualism is it anti

the thing were the very thing we're

doing is the thing that's never been

tested which is what happens when you

combine a bunch of vaccines in the same

person now I'm not going to tell you

that that's bad because I've never

studied it and I don't have any skill to

study it but I do agree it hasn't been

studied and if it's true that you should

study one vaccine you know if a new

vaccine comes in if it's true that the

FDA should study that vaccine isn't it

also true they should study it in

combination because what are what are

you know drug interactions if not that

we test drugs one at a time and then

when they interact with another drug we

say oh whoops it looks like this this

aspirin doesn't work with that other

stuff but we didn't test that because it

would be impossible to test every drug

with every other combination of drugs it

would be too many combinations so we

just kind of put that drug out there

tested in in isolation largely in

isolation and then when it kills

somebody or gives them a side effect you

say what else were you taking

well we better put this in the database

maybe we've got a problem here so the

president has the most realistic view in

this which is why would you trust

something this important that hasn't

been tested is that anti intellectual I

don't know you know you might say

politically is smart because he has it

both ways it's pro science and it's also

slightly anti vaccine without totally

committing to it so politically is

brilliant but it's also perfectly a

common sensical point of view and and by

the way I had never heard that point of

view I had heard it in a different realm

I had a friend number of years ago who

was trying to convince me to eat more

organic food and to avoid anything in a

package anything that has any kind of

additives and my opinion had always been

all of this stuff has been tested right

all of these additives have been tested

there's no reason to think that you know

just because my my jelly has a

food preservative in it that it's gonna

kill me because it's all been tested and

my friend said this they haven't tested

it all together and I thought how the

hell did I not ever think of that before

so her point was this that if the only

thing you ate they had an additive was

that jelly that you have you know once a

week probably wouldn't be a problem

because your body could easily handle

whatever a little little extra thing it

was adding to it but if everything you

eat has an additive it doesn't matter

that every one of those things has been

tested in isolation because what they

haven't tested is what happens we when

you give yourself a whole bunch of

different additives from different

sources of different types I don't know

does it hurt you somebody says you look

great for 65 I'm 61 damn it but that was

funny they do test vaccines altogether I

don't believe that there's no way that

they test vaccines altogether because

you couldn't I don't think you could

test them on humans like that there's a

limit to how much how much you can

really test about the combinations yeah

and the test is children that makes it

harder why is the lifespan in America so

much higher than before

I believe it stalled didn't I'm not

telling you the vaccines don't work I'm

not an anti-vaxxer I'm an

anti-intellectual I'm not an anti-vaxxer

of an anti-intellectual meaning that

meaning that I don't know how would I

know

all right well I don't know much about

this category if the additives and how

dangerous they are in the vaccines and

how dangerous they are so I'm going to

end here and I'm going to sign out and

I'll talk to you later bye