Episode 260 Scott Adams - The President’s Portfolio, a Systems Idea

but boom ba-ba-boom hey everybody I'll bet there aren't that many people who are already awake at least not in my timezone hey Pat come on in here the rest of you can watch this on replay but the early birds your kanye's life now doing what good morning good morning good morning do you have your beverage with you I hope you do hey Jason hey everybody it's time to grab your mug your glass your cup your vessel your Stein fill it with the liquid of your choice I like coffee and join me for the simultaneous scent so let's talk about this khashoggi thing sabor so Khashoggi was the journalist who was allegedly slain by Saudi security forces cut into pieces with a bone saw and his body removed from the Turkish consulate now as I've questioned before you always have to wait with this sort of thing because there's always going to be more to this story it just didn't quite make sense the way we heard it sounded a little too fantastical for us to really have understood everything about this and we're still waiting so we don't know what else we'll learn but there's kind of an interesting question that's a sub question about this the the journalist who was killed is a Muslim Brotherhood proponent and the Muslim Brotherhood as I understand that the current incarnation promotes a peaceful transition a democratic transition to Sharia law and in Slavik the world so there at least in their public face the Muslim Brotherhood is a in a non-violent way to conquer the world in for the benefit of Islam and I'm wondering how we in the West should look at something like this alleged murder should it become confirmed and somebody saying are you insane nonviolent no I'm not insane you're bad at listening I said their public face and they're their public pronouncements are nonviolent what they're doing behind the scenes I have not addressed so if you believe they're doing something behind the scenes to support Hamas or support other terrorist groups you would be agreeing with some some of the Middle Eastern countries who also consider them a terrorist group but if we're just talking about Khashoggi I've not been presented with any information at least in the press that would suggest that he in particular is in favor of any kind of violence so I have not seen that suggested and I think I would by now right but he was a Muslim Brotherhood person and I think it would be fair to say that there are members of the Muslim Brotherhood who do not favor violence but what they do favor is a view of the world that's by Western standards very anti-women and perhaps even more anti LGBTQ so anti-gay anti LBGT p/q i can never say that right an anti woman so when we're watching this and we're saying to ourselves how much trouble does the United States want to get into for what looked like sort of a Middle East you know internal problem because I'm not sure we want to take this guy side do we you know how much do we want to support the person who would change our system to something we would consider a form of slavery for women right now I'm not saying that's necessarily you know everybody's interpretation but by Western standards what Khashoggi was pushing was kind of a women second-class citizen baby-making slavery situation by Western eyes right obviously within the Islamic community they have a very different opinion of it but so the interesting question is if I take my own judgment out of this so I'm so I'm trying to I'm trying to describe this without infecting it with any opinions of my own because I don't really have strong opinions a lot of the stuff in the Middle East because I don't have the full context for things but it's an interesting question how much do we in the West and we in the West are 50% of women and then you add on to that the LGBTQ community and that's a majority right in the Democratic West most people as in more than 50% of our population is either a woman or a gay man because if you add the half roughly half that are women to the you know 10 percent or so of their LGBTQ and half of them are men and something like 55 55 percent of the West or women and gay men something like that so it's a majority how much should that majority in our democratic society care about to proponents of Sharia law and one kills the other because it's is somebody is arguing with my estimates you can argue with the estimates that's fine but it's the same point the there's a clear majority in the democratic countries of people who are there a woman or gay man if you had those two categories together they're more than 50% of the population everybody agrees with that so it's not clear to me how much risk the West should take over what's kind of an internal squabble between two sides that we shouldn't we shouldn't like either one of them too much because of what they what they would do with with the topics of women and gays in particular should they get their way and then you have this weird situation where I don't think you could argue that Saudi Arabia has it more enlightened more enlightened a listening approach to women and gays then the Muslim Brotherhood I don't think I don't think you can necessarily make that case but in terms of the public we see this bitten Salman guy looking like a reformer you know women can drive and I think there were some other smaller changes there so at least he's heading in the right direction so in terms of how it feels to us it's gonna it's gonna feel like at least saman had something going on there that was the right direction even if we don't like where he's at that he had dirt on the regime somebody says that could show he had dirt on the regime which I've heard is true but we don't know what that was anyway but it does feel like a little bit of an internal problem and I'm not sure how much the United States should embrace it as our problem let's talk about systems versus goals you know that I wrote a book called had it failed almost everything still when big in which I talked about having a system something you work on every day that gives you a good result but you don't necessarily know exactly how it's going to end so a system is something to improve your odds of a good outcome but you don't know exactly where it goes versus a goal which says we will have single-payer health care just you just use that as an example so a goal would be a single-payer health care so it assumes the exact answer or something like an exact answer as opposed to a system which would be a way to work toward a better healthcare situation but you don't know exactly how that works out that's what a system would look like let me suggest some new ideas here I'm going to throw some ideas into the mix I've talked to you already about how Kanye did something much bigger than the then the press realized or report it now what Kanye did was suggested the well he called ideation centers in urban areas and that would be a center where you would work with the local folks to come up with ideas for solving things if you come up with an idea ideally you want to be able to test it in maybe one city or one community within the city but something small that you can test so the ideation centers would create ideas you'd you'd package them so that you've got something an investor let's say you know billionaire who just wants to help or even the government that just wants to help and they've got some money do a small test that the small test works you implement it now what makes this a system is you don't know what the thing looks like you don't know what you don't know what ideas they're going to come up with it's a system we don't have a system Kanye is operating at a higher level than anybody who's criticizing him that's my take because this doesn't exist and it's exactly what needs to exist not a solution a system for creating solutions and testing them as many solutions as you can come up with to test but I would extend this idea and say maybe we should do even more of it I'm going to take healthcare as my example and I'm going to introduce this idea that I just made up so you won't find this anywhere this is just a mental experiment term I made up the president's portfolio now what I mean by the president's portfolio is not that the president is going to be investing in any stocks or anything like that so it's not that it would be a portfolio of startups or companies that are working for the betterment of the United States as a whole so most startups are just trying to make money right so if you're let's say you're a game startup you just have to make money it doesn't really make much difference to the United States except in some general way it might help the economy but there are other startups that would dramatically lower healthcare costs there are startups with that would get you dramatically better results in healthcare there are startups that are working on the systems the databases the processes that would greatly reduce the amount of complexity for example so the president's portfolio would be and this is an idea not a not a real thing and the idea would be that the president working with a team of people who would help him that what's in the portfolio and what isn't would be a list of companies and this in this one example for healthcare the healthcare companies that are startups that would really make a difference in the cost of healthcare if they worked and the idea of the president's portfolio is not that the president invests so there's no investment he's just spotlighting so it would be a spotlight that says look if you've qualified because your startup is a serious one and let's say there's some criteria such as you have to at least get some money from a high-end venture company so if you know Sequoia or some big venture company has already put money into you and and it could be demonstrated that you're for the benefit of the larger society not just making money then you could be in the president's portfolio what would be the advantage the advantage would be the spotlight so that the the billionaires who want to help would know exactly where to look they say oh I'll go to the web page with the list of startups that are part of the president's portfolio and you know I'd like to do something good for the country and why not maybe make some money at the same time so the billionaire goes here it looks down the list and says wow there's a company that if this works out they're gonna may be able to make an MRI that cost you ten dollars instead of hundreds of dollars so I'm gonna invest in that might not work but if it does the whole country maybe even the whole world is better off now I use healthcare as my example because I was a clear example where spotlighting the companies that can bring down costs would be very important but this could be any category it could be climate change what are all the companies working on things that would make a real difference to climate change wouldn't you like to know wouldn't you like to know that there are a dozen companies that are looking to capture co2 scrub at end of the world and of the air make maybe a better nuclear plant wouldn't you like to know what is the small portfolio of companies that are gonna fix our biggest problems so that our billionaires can be weaponized to make a difference right now if you've got a billion dollars and you want to help the world what the hell are you gonna do so this is the genius of the Gates Foundation when Bill Gates decided and here I'm you know I don't want to read his mind but it seems obvious from the facts it seems that Bill Gates said to himself some version of this I have all these billions of dollars I want to help the world how do I do it that's a it's actually hard because you don't know where to put that money that the government can't do a better that it can really make a difference what do you do so Gates created the Gates Foundation whose primary job as I understand it is to figure out where to put his money because the figuring out where to do it is the hard part that's sort of the sign of the golden age so the golden age as I define it is the time we're in where the biggest problems are the way we think about stuff we don't have a resource shortage we have an ideas shortage Kanye understanding that we're in the golden age where we don't have a resource a shortage we have an idea shortage we have a system shortage we haven't organized into the right systems has suggested a hugely important idea that the press has completely overlooked I'd a place to create ideas and package them so you can put them in front of a billionaire or put them in front of the government and say here's this idea the community is on board we've packaged it we've looked at the economics you know can we get a billionaire to do a small test likewise on health care I'm greatly annoyed when I watch the debate about single-payer the debate about single-payer goes like this yes or no that's the whole debate right yes single-payer or no but is there a smarter middle ground where you can find a way to do a small test we should never be saying no to big ideas let me say that again we should never say no to big ideas instead we should say can you test it can you test it small now that doesn't mean looking at Europe and seeing what they did although that's useful right could you and I don't know if this is true could you pick a state could you pick a county suppose you could pick a county and say alright we're just gonna test single-payer in this county for the next three years or whatever you're all going to be on the single-payer the government will artificially lower your drug costs in other words will subsidize them to give you the the impact of what it would be if we had negotiating power on a on a countrywide basis which we don't have yet because this is just a test so if the experts said well if you could get the if you could negotiate the prices down 30% you'd really have something so you just artificially do a test where you force the prices to be 30% lower see what happens now that particular test might be a stupid idea it takes people who are working in the area to come up with what a good test looks like but if if we're saying yes or no to any kind of a healthcare change it feels like the wrong process the right process to me sounds like can you test it is small if you can test is small you don't have to say yes or no right we should get out of yes or no if there's one change that Kanye can bring to the world it's to get us out of yes now we're not a yes/no world we should be a systems world where we're continually trying new ideas packaging them in a way we can test them small see how it does and then make a separate decision whether you want to go big so yes now is just an unproductive way to to address these big things all right competition in healthcare is a failure blah blah well I would imagine that there are lots of things you could test in healthcare and other ideas and by the way the the ideas that I'm suggesting here these are all the normal ideas in the business community so everything I'm describing here is the very this very way that it's the exact way that capitalism works so capitalism works great because they think of ideas they test them small before they decide to go big now the government does that in some cases but I would think that should be the standard form and you should never if you're a Republican and you're saying no to any other healthcare idea from the left that's just the wrong approach the right approach is can you test it as small if you can't test a small then you can say no if you can then you should be saying you know put together a package and let's see if we can test it somewhere small all right our D suffers with universal we don't know that do we we don't know that we do know that there might be some kind of a trade-off but we don't know what the trade-off looks like so so when you say stuff like such as innovation will suffer I think that needs to be tested it is fair to say that if you took the profits of the of the you know the healthcare businesses if there are profits reduced it probably would come out of R&D but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be something else jumping up to replace it you know some other entity all right please talk about persuasive systems are or are not yeah so systems generally fall into what I call the high ground maneuver so the high ground maneuver in persuasion is something that takes you out of the weeds of the details and brings you to a level where everybody in the discussion says okay that makes sense and you saw me do that right in front of you so if you said your single-payer good or bad is this particular change to healthcare or good or bad is this changing this rule or this regulation would that be good or bad the the weeds is yes/no or what's what's the trade-off the higher level is we don't know let's run a test so the brother test is always the high ground it would be unusual to come up with an example argument it's hard to think of one in which is better to start big before you've tested as small and everybody recognizes that right everybody's sense of the world their common sense if you want to call it that is going to recognize that testing small before you go big just make sense we have tested communism well nobody's suggesting communism how does that play into improved immigration system versus the wall so the wall is exactly the same situation as this we are currently in the process of replacing some parts of the existing border with better walls because there is funding for improvement so for upgrades they have some funding so we will soon be able to see if those better walls cause people to go to other places you know in the short run you you assume that they just move to a different place to get across the border if that happens that would be a validation that the wall at least is hard to scale if the wall is put up in some locations and people are just jumping over it easily or just you know throwing their fenton all over the top well then you've you learned something you didn't know so the wall because the wall that would take so long to do it it's a natural just by its nature you're testing it before you get to the big implementation you can always cancel the budget if the first bunches of wall didn't make any difference what about scaling ideas from the test phase different outcomes possible yeah so there's certainly some art and skill to developing a test that really does tell you something about the the larger implementation and there's certainly a risk that the test looks good on small but doesn't work and bad because you can't scale it there's something about the scaling so there's no clean answer other than it's always better to test because you'll be smarter than if you didn't but you could still get the wrong answer but that's always the possibility can you suggest how a person could find employment in something like an ideation center well you would have to have the right skill set there's a firm in San Francisco called IDEO IDE oh and they're sort of a design ideation center you could call it I've worked with them before and what they do is if you come in you're a corporate customer and say I want to design a new computer device it doesn't matter what you're designing they do design for all kinds of stuff and they'll put together a team that makes sense for this project so they might include an engineer might include a designer might include and you know an architect might so they'll pull together high-level people who've got you know Ph.

Ds and they've graduated MIT and some really smart people and they'll put them together in a diverse little team and they'll very quickly run through ideas so to answer your question how would you get a job at an ideation Center that doesn't quite exist yet you might start by becoming one of those things an engineer or a designer something that makes sense for being on that kind of a team and then you have something to pitch should the ideation centers have come into being what if you have a patent already I don't know what you're talking about you know it so the the answer is it just depends on the details all right I'm just looking at your somebody said diversity is the enemy of the group not exactly I believe that there are tests this show that the most effective group is one where somebody is very smart and the other people in the group are not necessarily that smart the the worst thing you could have is a group with five really smart people who are kind of similar because they would all have their own opinion of what to do but they're all smart and they don't want to give up so they would just fight with each other so sometimes you're better with one smart person one person who knows a certain skill somebody has a certain point of view that's why ethnic ethnic diversity is useful in all kinds of realms because if you're building something to sell it in one way or another either politically or commercially if you're if you're looking to sell something in the general public you want as many different opinions before you commit to the expense so ethnic gender diversity all of those different diversities are useful because you get the perspective without the expense all right small tests tell us nothing about how corrupt it will be once it's large you're right you can't learn everything from a small test but you can often learn if there was something there that just doesn't work so you can find out if there's a big obvious idea why something won't work what about the middle class I don't understand the question at some point there has to be unity in goal there can be unity in process that can be unity in what the system is and there can be unity in what the criteria is for an idea that gets through the system is implemented yeah the kadhi a comment about bath basketball is is not as crazy as it sounds in fact if you looked at if you literally looked at any of the stuff that's being reported as crazy from Kanye every bit of it has a perfectly good explanation which he actually presented in most cases there so even the stuff about the hydrogen in airplane and you know stuff like that those all have a solid basis in in reason it's just that the the press doesn't like reporting the good news did somebody say that Kanye is periscoping keep saying cultural gravity yeah so the I've been getting lots of feedback from people who are responding to the concept of cultural gravity I don't know if it's just because people like it because it makes them feel innocent for many problems you know well when you think that cultural gravity is part of the problem in urban areas that you know your own community is preventing you from success it sort of relieves you the observer from any guilt it's like well looks like they're doing it to themselves so I worry that it could be taken that way as as opposed to taking as a useful way to look at this situation something that has a you know a practical functional element to it kanya was live earlier he did a livestream on periscope but he's not even on Twitter anymore but he was periscoping maybe so Yi's mind controls go from last night I'll do that I will watch Kanye's periscope from last night run with cultural gravity yeah I'm gonna stick with that for a while I'm gonna going to be testing that one and see if it gets any any weight oh he's back on Twitter good okay I'm definitely going to watch Kanye's mind control periscope that's got to be great I can't wait all right I think we've said everything we're gonna say I'm gonna sign off for now and I will talk to you later

but boom ba-ba-boom hey everybody

I'll bet there aren't that many people

who are already awake

at least not in my timezone hey Pat come

on in here the rest of you can watch

this on replay but the early birds your

kanye's life now doing what good morning

good morning good morning do you have

your beverage with you I hope you do hey

Jason

hey everybody it's time to grab your mug

your glass your cup your vessel your

Stein fill it with the liquid of your

choice I like coffee and join me for the

simultaneous scent so let's talk about

this khashoggi thing sabor so Khashoggi

was the journalist who was allegedly

slain by Saudi security forces cut into

pieces with a bone saw and his body

removed from the Turkish consulate now

as I've questioned before you always

have to wait with this sort of thing

because there's always going to be more

to this story it just didn't quite make

sense the way we heard it sounded a

little too fantastical for us to really

have understood everything about this

and we're still waiting so we don't know

what else we'll learn but there's kind

of an interesting question that's a sub

question about this the the journalist

who was killed is a Muslim Brotherhood

proponent and the Muslim Brotherhood as

I understand that the current

incarnation promotes a peaceful

transition a democratic transition to

Sharia law and in

Slavik the world so there at least in

their public face the Muslim Brotherhood

is a in a non-violent way to conquer the

world in for the benefit of Islam and

I'm wondering how we in the West should

look at something like this alleged

murder should it become confirmed and

somebody saying are you insane

nonviolent no I'm not insane you're bad

at listening I said their public face

and they're their public pronouncements

are nonviolent what they're doing behind

the scenes

I have not addressed so if you believe

they're doing something behind the

scenes to support Hamas or support other

terrorist groups you would be agreeing

with some some of the Middle Eastern

countries who also consider them a

terrorist group but if we're just

talking about Khashoggi I've not been

presented with any information at least

in the press that would suggest that he

in particular is in favor of any kind of

violence so I have not seen that

suggested and I think I would by now

right but he was a Muslim Brotherhood

person and I think it would be fair to

say that there are members of the Muslim

Brotherhood who do not favor violence

but what they do favor is a view of the

world that's by Western standards very

anti-women and perhaps even more anti

LGBTQ so anti-gay anti LBGT p/q i can

never say that right an anti woman so

when we're watching this and we're

saying to ourselves how much trouble

does the United States want to get into

for what looked like sort of a Middle

East

you know internal problem

because I'm not sure we want to take

this guy side do we you know how much do

we want to support the person who would

change our system to something we would

consider a form of slavery for women

right now I'm not saying that's

necessarily you know everybody's

interpretation but by Western standards

what Khashoggi was pushing was kind of a

women second-class citizen baby-making

slavery situation by Western eyes right

obviously within the Islamic community

they have a very different opinion of it

but so the interesting question is if I

take my own judgment out of this so I'm

so I'm trying to I'm trying to describe

this without infecting it with any

opinions of my own because I don't

really have strong opinions a lot of the

stuff in the Middle East because I don't

have the full context for things but

it's an interesting question how much do

we in the West and we in the West are

50% of women and then you add on to that

the LGBTQ community and that's a

majority right in the Democratic West

most people as in more than 50% of our

population is either a woman or a gay

man because if you add the half roughly

half that are women to the you know 10

percent or so of their LGBTQ and half of

them are men and something like 55 55

percent of the West or women and gay men

something like that so it's a majority

how much should that majority in our

democratic society care about to

proponents of Sharia law and one kills

the other because it's is somebody is

arguing with my estimates you can argue

with the estimates that's fine but it's

the same point the there's a clear

majority in the democratic countries

of people who are there a woman or gay

man if you had those two categories

together they're more than 50% of the

population everybody agrees with that so

it's not clear to me how much risk the

West should take over what's kind of an

internal squabble between two sides that

we shouldn't we shouldn't like either

one of them too much because of what

they what they would do with with the

topics of women and gays in particular

should they get their way and then you

have this weird situation where I don't

think you could argue that Saudi Arabia

has it more enlightened more enlightened

a listening approach to women and gays

then the Muslim Brotherhood I don't

think I don't think you can necessarily

make that case but in terms of the

public we see this bitten Salman guy

looking like a reformer

you know women can drive and I think

there were some other smaller changes

there so at least he's heading in the

right direction so in terms of how it

feels to us it's gonna it's gonna feel

like at least saman had something going

on there that was the right direction

even if we don't like where he's at that

he had dirt on the regime somebody says

that could show he had dirt on the

regime which I've heard is true but we

don't know what that was

anyway but it does feel like a little

bit of an internal problem and I'm not

sure how much the United States should

embrace it as our problem let's talk

about systems versus goals you know that

I wrote a book called had it failed

almost everything still when big in

which I talked about having a system

something you work on every day that

gives you a good result but you don't

necessarily know exactly how it's going

to end so a system is something to

improve your odds of a good outcome but

you don't know exactly where it goes

versus a goal which says

we will have single-payer health care

just you just use that as an example so

a goal would be a single-payer health

care so it assumes the exact answer or

something like an exact answer as

opposed to a system which would be a way

to work toward a better healthcare

situation but you don't know exactly how

that works out that's what a system

would look like let me suggest some new

ideas here I'm going to throw some ideas

into the mix I've talked to you already

about how Kanye did something much

bigger than the then the press realized

or report it now what Kanye did was

suggested the well he called ideation

centers in urban areas and that would be

a center where you would work with the

local folks to come up with ideas for

solving things if you come up with an

idea ideally you want to be able to test

it in maybe one city or one community

within the city but something small that

you can test so the ideation centers

would create ideas you'd you'd package

them so that you've got something an

investor let's say you know billionaire

who just wants to help or even the

government that just wants to help and

they've got some money do a small test

that the small test works you implement

it now what makes this a system is you

don't know what the thing looks like you

don't know what you don't know what

ideas they're going to come up with it's

a system we don't have a system Kanye is

operating at a higher level than anybody

who's criticizing him that's my take

because this doesn't exist and it's

exactly what needs to exist not a

solution a system for creating solutions

and testing them as many solutions as

you can come up with to test but I would

extend this idea and say maybe we should

do even more of it I'm going to take

healthcare as my example and I'm going

to introduce this idea that I just made

up so you won't find this anywhere this

is just a mental experiment term I made

up the president's portfolio now what I

mean by the

president's portfolio is not that the

president is going to be investing in

any stocks or anything like that so it's

not that it would be a portfolio of

startups or companies that are working

for the betterment of the United States

as a whole so most startups are just

trying to make money right so if you're

let's say you're a game startup you just

have to make money it doesn't really

make much difference to the United

States except in some general way it

might help the economy but there are

other startups that would dramatically

lower healthcare costs

there are startups with that would get

you dramatically better results in

healthcare there are startups that are

working on the systems the databases the

processes that would greatly reduce the

amount of complexity for example so the

president's portfolio would be and this

is an idea not a not a real thing and

the idea would be that the president

working with a team of people who would

help him that what's in the portfolio

and what isn't

would be a list of companies and this in

this one example for healthcare the

healthcare companies that are startups

that would really make a difference in

the cost of healthcare if they worked

and the idea of the president's

portfolio is not that the president

invests so there's no investment

he's just spotlighting so it would be a

spotlight that says look if you've

qualified because your startup is a

serious one and let's say there's some

criteria such as you have to at least

get some money from a high-end venture

company so if you know Sequoia or some

big venture company has already put

money into you and and it could be

demonstrated that you're for the benefit

of the larger society not just making

money then you could be in the

president's portfolio what would be the

advantage the advantage would be the

spotlight so that the the billionaires

who want to help would know exactly

where to look they say oh I'll go to the

web page with the list of startups that

are part of the president's portfolio

and you know I'd like to do something

good for the country

and why not maybe make some money at the

same time so the billionaire goes here

it looks down the list and says wow

there's a company that if this works out

they're gonna may be able to make an MRI

that cost you ten dollars instead of

hundreds of dollars so I'm gonna invest

in that might not work but if it does

the whole country maybe even the whole

world is better off now I use healthcare

as my example because I was a clear

example where spotlighting the companies

that can bring down costs would be very

important but this could be any category

it could be climate change what are all

the companies working on things that

would make a real difference to climate

change wouldn't you like to know

wouldn't you like to know that there are

a dozen companies that are looking to

capture co2 scrub at end of the world

and of the air make maybe a better

nuclear plant wouldn't you like to know

what is the small portfolio of companies

that are gonna fix our biggest problems

so that our billionaires can be

weaponized to make a difference right

now if you've got a billion dollars and

you want to help the world what the hell

are you gonna do so this is the genius

of the Gates Foundation when Bill Gates

decided and here I'm you know I don't

want to read his mind but it seems

obvious from the facts it seems that

Bill Gates said to himself some version

of this I have all these billions of

dollars I want to help the world how do

I do it that's a it's actually hard

because you don't know where to put that

money that the government can't do a

better that it can really make a

difference what do you do

so Gates created the Gates Foundation

whose primary job as I understand it is

to figure out where to put his money

because the figuring out where to do it

is the hard part that's sort of the sign

of the golden age so the golden age as I

define it is the time we're in where the

biggest problems are the way we think

about stuff we don't have a resource

shortage

we have an ideas shortage Kanye

understanding that we're in the golden

age where we don't have a resource a

shortage we have an idea shortage we

have a system shortage we haven't

organized into the right systems has

suggested a hugely important idea that

the press has completely overlooked I'd

a place to create ideas and package them

so you can put them in front of a

billionaire or put them in front of the

government and say here's this idea the

community is on board we've packaged it

we've looked at the economics you know

can we get a billionaire to do a small

test

likewise on health care I'm greatly

annoyed when I watch the debate about

single-payer the debate about

single-payer goes like this yes or no

that's the whole debate right yes

single-payer or no but is there a

smarter middle ground where you can find

a way to do a small test we should never

be saying no to big ideas let me say

that again we should never say no to big

ideas instead we should say can you test

it can you test it small now that

doesn't mean looking at Europe and

seeing what they did although that's

useful right could you and I don't know

if this is true could you pick a state

could you pick a county suppose you

could pick a county and say alright

we're just gonna test single-payer in

this county for the next three years or

whatever you're all going to be on the

single-payer the government will

artificially lower your drug costs in

other words will subsidize them to give

you the the impact of what it would be

if we had negotiating power on a on a

countrywide basis which we don't have

yet because this is just a test so if

the experts said well if you could get

the if you could negotiate the prices

down 30% you'd really have something so

you just artificially do a test

where you force the prices to be 30%

lower see what happens

now that particular test might be a

stupid idea it takes people who are

working in the area to come up with what

a good test looks like but if if we're

saying yes or no to any kind of a

healthcare change it feels like the

wrong process the right process to me

sounds like can you test it is small if

you can test is small you don't have to

say yes or no right we should get out of

yes or no if there's one change that

Kanye can bring to the world it's to get

us out of yes now we're not a yes/no

world we should be a systems world where

we're continually trying new ideas

packaging them in a way we can test them

small see how it does and then make a

separate decision whether you want to go

big so yes now is just an unproductive

way to to address these big things all

right competition in healthcare is a

failure blah blah well I would imagine

that there are lots of things you could

test in healthcare and other ideas and

by the way the the ideas that I'm

suggesting here these are all the normal

ideas in the business community so

everything I'm describing here is the

very this very way that it's the exact

way that capitalism works so capitalism

works great because they think of ideas

they test them small before they decide

to go big now the government does that

in some cases but I would think that

should be the standard form and you

should never if you're a Republican and

you're saying no to any other healthcare

idea from the left that's just the wrong

approach the right approach is can you

test it as small if you can't test a

small then you can say no if you can

then you should be saying you know put

together a package and let's see if we

can test it somewhere small all right

our D suffers with universal we don't

know that do we we don't know that we do

know that there might be some kind of a

trade-off but we don't know what the

trade-off looks like so so when you say

stuff like such as innovation will

suffer I think that needs to be tested

it is fair to say that if you took the

profits of the of the you know the

healthcare businesses if there are

profits reduced it probably would come

out of R&D but that doesn't mean there

wouldn't be something else jumping up to

replace it you know some other entity

all right please talk about persuasive

systems are or are not yeah so systems

generally fall into what I call the high

ground maneuver so the high ground

maneuver in persuasion is something that

takes you out of the weeds of the

details and brings you to a level where

everybody in the discussion says okay

that makes sense and you saw me do that

right in front of you so if you said

your single-payer good or bad is this

particular change to healthcare or good

or bad is this changing this rule or

this regulation would that be good or

bad the the weeds is yes/no or what's

what's the trade-off the higher level is

we don't know let's run a test so the

brother test is always the high ground

it would be unusual to come up with an

example argument it's hard to think of

one in which is better to start big

before you've tested as small and

everybody recognizes that right

everybody's sense of the world their

common sense if you want to call it that

is going to recognize that testing small

before you go big just make sense we

have tested communism well nobody's

suggesting communism

how does that play into improved

immigration system versus the wall so

the wall is exactly the same situation

as this we are currently in the process

of replacing some parts of the existing

border with better walls because there

is funding for improvement so for

upgrades they have some funding so we

will soon be able to see if those better

walls cause people to go to other places

you know in the short run you you assume

that they just move to a different place

to get across the border if that happens

that would be a validation that the wall

at least is hard to scale if the wall is

put up in some locations and people are

just jumping over it easily or just you

know throwing their fenton all over the

top well then you've you learned

something you didn't know so the wall

because the wall that would take so long

to do it

it's a natural just by its nature you're

testing it before you get to the big

implementation you can always cancel the

budget if the first bunches of wall

didn't make any difference what about

scaling ideas from the test phase

different outcomes possible yeah so

there's certainly some art and skill to

developing a test that really does tell

you something about the the larger

implementation and there's certainly a

risk that the test looks good on small

but doesn't work and bad because you

can't scale it there's something about

the scaling so there's no clean answer

other than it's always better to test

because you'll be smarter than if you

didn't but you could still get the wrong

answer but that's always the possibility

can you suggest how a person could find

employment in something like an ideation

center well you would have to have the

right skill set there's a firm in San

Francisco called IDEO

IDE oh and they're sort of a design

ideation center you could call it I've

worked

with them before and what they do is if

you come in you're a corporate customer

and say I want to design a new computer

device it doesn't matter what you're

designing they do design for all kinds

of stuff and they'll put together a team

that makes sense for this project so

they might include an engineer might

include a designer might include and you

know an architect might so they'll pull

together high-level people who've got

you know PhDs and they've graduated MIT

and some really smart people and they'll

put them together in a diverse little

team and they'll very quickly run

through ideas so to answer your question

how would you get a job at an ideation

Center that doesn't quite exist yet you

might start by becoming one of those

things an engineer or a designer

something that makes sense for being on

that kind of a team and then you have

something to pitch should the ideation

centers have come into being what if you

have a patent already I don't know what

you're talking about you know it so the

the answer is it just depends on the

details all right I'm just looking at

your

somebody said diversity is the enemy of

the group not exactly I believe that

there are tests this show that the most

effective group is one where somebody is

very smart and the other people in the

group are not necessarily that smart

the the worst thing you could have is a

group with five really smart people who

are kind of similar because they would

all have their own opinion of what to do

but they're all smart and they don't

want to give up so they would just fight

with each other so sometimes you're

better with one smart person one person

who knows a certain skill somebody has a

certain point of view

that's why ethnic ethnic diversity is

useful in all kinds of realms because if

you're building something to sell it in

one way or another either politically or

commercially if you're if you're looking

to sell something in the general public

you want as many different opinions

before you commit to the expense so

ethnic gender diversity all of those

different diversities are useful because

you get the perspective without the

expense all right

small tests tell us nothing about how

corrupt it will be once it's large

you're right you can't learn everything

from a small test but you can often

learn if there was something there that

just doesn't work so you can find out if

there's a big obvious idea why something

won't work

what about the middle class I don't

understand the question at some point

there has to be unity in goal there can

be unity in process that can be unity in

what the system is and there can be

unity in what the criteria is for an

idea that gets through the system is

implemented

yeah the kadhi a comment about bath

basketball is is not as crazy as it

sounds in fact if you looked at if you

literally looked at any of the stuff

that's being reported as crazy from

Kanye every bit of it has a perfectly

good explanation which he actually

presented in most cases there so even

the stuff about the hydrogen in airplane

and you know stuff like that those all

have a solid basis in in reason it's

just that the the press doesn't like

reporting the good news did somebody say

that Kanye is periscoping

keep saying cultural gravity yeah so the

I've been getting lots of feedback from

people who are responding to the concept

of cultural gravity I don't know if it's

just because people like it because it

makes them feel innocent for many

problems you know well when you think

that cultural gravity is part of the

problem in urban areas that you know

your own community is preventing you

from success

it sort of relieves you the observer

from any guilt it's like well looks like

they're doing it to themselves

so I worry that it could be taken that

way as as opposed to taking as a useful

way to look at this situation something

that has a you know a practical

functional element to it

kanya was live earlier he did a

livestream on periscope but he's not

even on Twitter anymore but he was

periscoping maybe so

Yi's mind controls go from last night

I'll do that I will watch Kanye's

periscope from last night run with

cultural gravity yeah I'm gonna stick

with that for a while I'm gonna going to

be testing that one and see if it gets

any any weight oh he's back on Twitter

good okay I'm definitely going to watch

Kanye's mind control periscope that's

got to be great I can't wait all right I

think we've said everything we're gonna

say I'm gonna sign off for now and I

will talk to you later