Episode 3033 CWSA 12/01/25

Come on in.

It is good to see you again.

I tell you, it feels like it's been forever, even though it was only yesterday.

But that's how much I missed you.

Oh, wait a second.

Whoa.

What is that?

Hold on.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Ah, it's okay.

It's just the Dilbert calendar.

It was so amazing that I thought, well, what can it be?

But if you're not done shopping, get your Dilbert calendar from amazon.com.

It's the only place you can get it.

All right, now that I've done that little sales pitch, I guess we'll have to get serious.

I got a show for you today.

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All right, let's see what's happening.

Um, is there uh anything that I've been saying for years that is now the subject of scientific revelation?

Yes.

According to Eric Nolan on Cypost, did you know that participating in activist groups is linked to increased narcissism and psychop psychopathy over time?

Well, it turns out that uh according to science, um if you happen to already be a narcissist or a psychopath, you're more likely you're more likely to get involved in uh in activist groups.

But not only does it work in that direction, but if you are not especially narcissistic or psychopathic, uh being involved in one of those uh activist groups might turn you into it.

So, it's a sort of a two-way thing.

Now, does that sound like something that surprises you?

Totally.

No, because you're probably in the same bubble I am.

And conservative thinkers have been saying this for years.

I mean, several years.

When was the first time Jordan Peterson uh told you that uh the what is it?

The cluster B personalities tend to be on the left and they tend to be in activist groups.

So, we kind of saw that one coming.

No big surprise there.

Well, did you know according to the University of California Riverside that the soybean oil, the oil, the soybean oil has a hidden fat derived molecule that might fuel obesity.

In other words, uh soybean oil makes you fat.

I don't think it happens to every single person, but uh there's a lot of it.

Have you ever done an experiment where you go to the grocery store and try to find any packaged item has to be packaged that doesn't have soy in it?

Have you ever done that experiment?

You you could start at the end of the shelves for whatever section you're on.

Doesn't matter what section.

Then pick up the first package you see and and see if there's any soy product in it.

There will be.

Then put it back.

go to the very next thing next to it.

There's soy.

I I once looked like for probably an hour to see if I could find one damn thing that didn't have soy in it.

Now, there might be some obvious exceptions, like if you're buying something that only has one ingredient, you know, it's not necessarily soy, but if you have anything that has multiple ingredients in it, oh yeah, you're eating soy.

So, I don't know if the soy beans and the soy oil have the same impact, but beware.

Well, Aira the Dawn um has released a little preview of another piece of music that features me uh as the vocalist.

It's so funny to hear myself say that, that uh that I'm the least musical person in the world.

Yeah, I play a little bit of drums.

That's about it.

But uh to to live in a world in which Kira the Dawn has incorporated my podcast voice as sort of a a layer in his music.

It's kind of really innovative and fun.

And I guess he's going to drop the album that would have a number of songs that he put together like that that would feature my my voice and his music.

So that's coming December 19th.

But there's a preview if you want to see one of the new ones that's on my feed or you can find it on Akira the Dawn's feed.

Anyway, um did you know well you you're going to know in a moment that uh according to Newsmax Mark Swanson's writing that uh according to a poll 63% pled say a four-year degree is not worth the cost.

um and that more than six and 10 registered voters think a four-year degree is not worth the cost according to new NBC News poll.

Now, so the the respect I guess that's the right word for a four-year degree is sort of at an all-time low or at least in the modern in modern times it's low.

Do you think that that is first of all a good representation of reality?

I think it is a good reputation good representation of what people think about the college degree.

But do you think they're just being influenced by the fact that it's too expensive?

And if you ask somebody who doesn't have one, what are they going to say?

>> >> If I did not have a four-year degree and you asked me today, uh, how important is it?

I'd probably say, totally unimportant.

Yeah, you shouldn't get one.

And then I'd go off and get one.

So, I had an advantage.

So, here's my advice.

It's probably not essential that you get a four-year degree, but it's a competitive world.

So, if you can get one, you know, if it's within your financial and or other abilities, you should definitely get one because you're going to be competing against people who don't have one.

And, you know, maybe you're lucky and you get an employer who genuinely doesn't care.

you know, there are more of them every day, but the odds of running into somebody who does care, you know, maybe because they have one themselves or they went to the same school or whatever, it's pretty high.

So, I would say from a maybe a logical perspective, it's not as necessary as it used to be.

But if you're looking at it from a strategic um employee perspective, yeah, you should get one.

If you can do it without burdening yourself financially for the rest of your life.

Now, you don't want to do it at all costs.

You want to do it at a, you know, reasonable cost for your resources.

But yeah, I would definitely I would definitely play the advantage if you if you have the option.

Um, you know what Poly Market is?

It's a one of those betting sites.

It's the big betting site.

Well, apparently, um, the betting sites are more accurate than opinion polls.

So, once people put their money on it, they're way better at predicting than if you just say, "Hey, what do you think?" Um, so the uh I guess one of the founders or the CEO was talking about that and uh so keep an eye on poly market because it's going to tell you more than opinion.

However, it makes me ask this question.

Don't you think that if you had some way to know who had been really good at predicting in the past that you'd like to see just those people predicting the next thing?

Wouldn't that be a lot better?

Why would I take the average of people who are terrible at predicting?

Meaning that they didn't win anything, you know, because you could see if they ever won anything on Poly Market.

Why would I want to see the average of the people who never were right mixed in with the average of the people who were right most of the time?

What the hell good is that?

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if you could go to Poly Market and say, "Show me the people who have been right more than 60% of the time on whatever topic it is." Of course, that would be better.

How about um if it's something that maybe is a new category or something, wouldn't you like to see the people who were the most well-informed, why would I why would I take the average of people who were poorly informed on the topic?

Let's say the topic is crypto.

Do I really need to see, you know, my idiot?

Well, I won't say that, but um do I want to see my plumbers's opinion on crypto mixed in with David Sachs opinion?

No.

No, I just want to see David Sax's opinion.

I don't want to see my plumbers's opinion on crypto.

So, I think there's a whole level where this prediction thing can can go up a level.

Uh they just have to give us a way to know who's been good at it in the past.

Well, Trump is teasing that he's already picked the replacement for Jerome Powell to be the head of the Fed.

We don't know who that will be, but he's sort of hinting by being koi about it that uh Kevin Hasset is likely to be picked.

That's that's not confirmed, but that's what the smart people think.

Now, Kevin Hasset is already in the administration.

I don't know his exact job, but it's something economic.

And um I'm pretty sure he would take the job.

I think he was asked and he said the generic answer, which is, you know, he would do what the president wants him to do, which is sort of a yes.

Um but apparently the markets are poised to love it if he gets picked because he's a lower lower those interest rates kind of a guy.

and markets love that.

So, if Kevin Hasset does get picked, um there there's likely to be a bump in the market.

Now, keep in mind, I do not give financial advice.

So, there are lots of other variables.

So, maybe he gets selected on one day, but it's the same day that some other thing falls apart.

So, it doesn't mean the markets will definitely go up, but uh apparently they'll be at least friendly to him um and likely to go up.

Now, in other news, speaking of David Sachs, New York Times had a hit piece about him and uh he he's he's pushing back on it pretty hard.

And the the New York Times tried to make the argument that he had some kind of uh conflict of interest on AI or crypto and that his own investments somehow blah blah blah.

Well, apparently that does not stand up to scrutiny and there's some some idea that the New York Times is, you know, it's just a headpiece basically, meaning not too uh not too reliable.

Now, the funny thing is, if you were to compare the credibility of the New York Times to the credibility of David Sachs, which one's more credible?

It's not really even close.

It's Sachs.

If you were to look at his lifetime of, you know, whatever he's said in public, um, compared to a lifetime of what the New York Times has reported to be true, I'm pretty sure he would win if there were some way to actually compare those things.

But I did notice that uh, Naval Ravocant, who I mention often, um, he posted about that, about the New York Times hit piece.

He said, "There are lies, damn lies, and New York time headlines." Now, Naval, who I sometimes refer to as the smartest person in the world, um, but let's call him the wisest person we know.

So, he's famously non-political, but this is a little bit political.

Not really.

It's more about one person, but it, you know, he's he's got one little toe in that domain, which is unusual.

He he usually stays completely away from the the political nonsense and you know deals with weightier you know life issues etc.

But here's the thing this made me that made me think about this.

Um do you remember when Bill Clinton was running for office and he famously said that if you elect him you get Hillary for free.

And before we knew before we knew who Hillary really was, that seemed to me at the time uh like a good deal.

I thought to myself, "Wow, really?

If if you get, you know, if you get Bill Clinton as president, which at the time, I have to confess, I I was supporting Bill Clinton." And so I thought that was a good idea.

And then when you see how uh capable Hillary is, I thought, well, that's actually a pretty good argument.

Two for one.

You know, who hates that?

Now, it turns out Hillary was not really the one you'd want to get for free, but we didn't know that at the time.

So, it seemed like a good idea.

Likewise, when you when you vote for Trump, you get me for free.

Think about it.

Would I be doing what I'm doing if Trump were not the president or earlier um when he was running for president?

Not really.

I mean, I I became, if you can call me political, I guess you could.

I only became political because Trump specifically was a persuader and you know that was my angle in and so you got me for free.

I literally wouldn't be involved except that Trump is the key player.

And so you get whatever value you think I might add and reframing things or helping with messaging, whatever, is free.

I'm not charging anybody anything.

I mean, obviously I monetize some of my feeds, but in terms of politics, nobody's paying me for that.

I don't have any kind of job.

You get me for free.

And then I see that you know Naval commenting on Sachs they know each other and it occurred to me that when you hire David Saxs for your government you get an entire network of all the smartest people in Silicon Valley naval just being let's say the tip of the spear there of smart people.

You get all of that for free.

And nobody ever talks about that because, you know, Sachs, if you looked at his, let's call it a rolodex, even though that's an old term, he could call almost anybody and get a second opinion on anything.

He He's just really wellconed, but also has a great reputation um in the investment tech community.

And you get all of that for free.

Nobody ever talks about that.

Isn't that Isn't that funny?

Because that's really worth a lot.

That the fact that he, you know, he's one phone call away from an intense network of the smartest people in the world.

Um, and he could contact me if he ever wanted to.

I I follow him on X.

I think he follows me back.

So, you get me for free, too.

if if there was anything that I could ever add to what he's doing.

I doubt it because it's not like I know much about crypto or AI compared to him.

Anyway, so don't forget what you get for free.

Um Elon Musk was doing a podcast recently where he had lots of uh quotable moments.

Um we'll talk about a few of them.

One of them was uh so Elon has predicted that money won't have any value in the future and instead it will be energy.

So energy will be the true currency.

And because Bitcoin can only be created with energy because the computer has to do a lot of crunching to create create a new Bitcoin and the ones that we have were created by energy that uh Bitcoin is uh let's see what did he say?

He said uh long-term I think money disappears as a concept.

Money disappears.

How would you like to be the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, and know that almost certainly money will become worthless?

He's going to go from the richest person on the entire planet to, "Oh, uh, you want to you want a new car?

I want a new car.

We can both have a robot go build us one." I'm simplifying a little bit, but uh but uh Elon predicts a world where the AI and the robots will make essentially everything you want close to free and it doesn't matter who you are, it'll just all be sort of free.

Now, that's a very optimistic prediction.

Um but he takes it further and uh I I like having this to cling to.

I don't know if it's true, but he predicts that uh quote uh uh I think the future we probably won't have money.

Energy and power generation will become the de facto currency.

That part I agree with completely and I've said the same thing.

I I believe that energy was is the new money.

Uh and maybe Bitcoin is just the, you know, the standin for the energy.

But uh he did say um that the only way out of debt in the future the only way literally the only way there there's not a second way to escape our debt burden you know our 38 trillion or whatever it will be by the time we start turning it around.

The only way that that will get remediated is if the world of robots and AI is so stimulative that it makes even our $ 38 trillion debt seem small.

Now, I might not be doing the best job of explaining it, but did that make sense?

that essentially an entirely new economy is about to emerge and it will very quickly just swamp in size the entire existing economy.

So it might be 10 times it, 100 times it.

We don't really know.

It's uncharted territory.

But uh that world according to Elon Musk, the smartest person you know is the only way out.

Otherwise, we're literally doomed.

We're doomed.

So, uh let's hope that the robots and the AI make a lot of money.

Now, here's the part I don't fully understand.

How could it be that money is worthless at the same time that we're making so much extra money from robots and AI that it compensates for our debt or pays it down or or minimizes it?

I I feel like there's something missing.

Like it can't be true that that the AI and robots become this substitute for money.

at the same time, everybody can have everything.

Or or could it be that all the people who hold the debt um wouldn't care if they never got paid back because everybody can have everything for free?

So, I haven't quite figured out how that all fits together, but I love hearing that there's at least one possibility that the smartest person, you know, who isn't who isn't Naval, uh, that the smartest person, you know, aside from Naval, thinks that there is a way out.

Not guaranteed.

Uh, I don't even know if he's going as far as to say it's most likely.

He didn't say that, but at least there's some possibility.

And that's more than I thought we had, honestly.

Well, speaking of that, um, according to Zero Hedge, our tariff revenue has surged to a new high.

So, 31.4 billion in October.

So, that's just from tariffs.

And uh what percentage of our total uh tax revenue do you think that is?

Well, I asked uh AI chat GPT and apparently our the amount that we collect in income tax per month a recent month October is a little over 400 billion.

So now we're up to something like 8% of our entire uh incoming revenue from taxes.

About 8% of it um is tariffs.

Now that's 8% we weren't getting before.

So it's, you know, it's on top of the 400 million billion 400 billion.

And I have to admit, I didn't think the tariffs would ever get to 8%.

And so Trump is, you know, teasing that maybe he would get rid of income tax and have only tariffs someday if if the tariff number kept going up.

I don't see how that's possible, but if I'm being honest, I also didn't see that um tariffs would ever reach 8% of our monthly tax revenue.

To me, that's a lot.

8%.

That's pretty impressive.

So, I'm going to say all bets are off.

Um, we don't know how big that could get.

I still don't see a path to get all the way to no income tax and tariffs do everything, but I'm not going to I'm not going to rule it out now.

So, I'm move I'm moving from, well, there's no way that's going to work to I don't know.

Maybe, maybe.

Uh let's talk about Mark Kelly, Senator Kelly, who as you know is part of what we're calling the sedicious sex.

Uh one of the six Democrats who did the video saying that the military should uh should not obey illegal orders.

So, he goes on Meet the Press yesterday and uh he was asked by the Meet the Press host if he would refuse an order uh if he had been in the military and he had been asked to attack the Venezuelan drug boats, would he consider that an illegal order?

That is a good question.

So, if you're thinking that NBC is going to give him a softballs, well, that wasn't a softball.

That that that question was exactly the question I wanted to be asked.

Would you interpret this as an illegal order if you had been asked to blow up one of these Venezuelan narco boats?

Well, here's what Kelly said.

Rather than answer the question, he avoided the question.

Huh?

He had just said that it's sort of common sense and any reasonable person can certainly tell the difference between an illegal order in the military and a and a legal one.

And then when he's asked to get a specific example, is this legal or illegal?

He changed the subject and he reinterpreted it by saying, "Well, the news story recently about Hagsath uh alleges that there was a a secondary attack on one boat, the first one, I think, that killed the survivors." So, he said, "Well, you know, we're really talking about, you know, that second order." But he didn't really answer the question at all.

Now, how can he have it both ways?

How can it be that a reasonable person can definitely look at a real world situation and they would definitely know what is legal and what isn't?

So, there'd be no real ambiguity in the real world.

But he couldn't answer the very first question.

He had to avoid the question because he couldn't answer it.

And you know what?

I don't know the answer to the question either.

So, even if you take the the story about Heg Seth uh to be true, and by the way, I don't think that is at all uh confirmed, that that's an allegation, a whistleblower thing.

I don't know that that will ever be confirmed that there was a there was a standing order of some kind that you had to kill all the people in the boat.

I don't know.

Uh, I'm not assuming that that's a real I'm not assuming that the allegations will be proven now.

But let's say they were just to take this this question to its logical conclusion.

What if you were in the military, you took out the boat and you said, "Okay, that part's legal because they're they're terrorists and uh you know, I've got the legal authority to do it." But then there are these two alleged two survivors and then suppose you had the question of do you take them out too or do you try to rescue them because they they live to which I say how does that work with terrorists in general?

If you were in an airplane over land and you spotted some terrorists, be they al-Qaeda or someone else, and you knew that's who it was, so you knew that it was al-Qaeda and they weren't in the they weren't in the act of doing a terrorist thing, but they were definitely preparing for it.

So, let's say they were loading bombs onto a truck, and you knew that they had bad intentions for those bombs.

Could you kill those terrorists from the air if all you knew is that it's al-Qaeda and they were preparing some bombs?

To which I say, I don't know, but I think it would be legal.

So I asked Chad GBT, is it illegal for the military to kill a terrorist who is preparing a terror act?

What do you think the AI said?

I asked chat GBT in this case, not Grock.

Grock had some issues this morning, so I was using chat GPT.

What do you think in the comments?

You tell me.

Do you think that AI said, "Oh, it's totally legal to kill a terrorist if they're in the act of preparing a terror act." Well, here's what it said.

He said, "In general, under international law and the laws of armed conflict, it is not necessarily illegal not necessarily illegal for a military to target and kill a terrorist who is actively preparing an imminent terror attack.

And then it goes on and explains it.

Now we are we are soundly into gray area here, right?

If I if we have declared that the the terrorists I'm sorry if we have already declared the government that the narco boats are terrorists because they're delivering a weapon of mass destruction to our shores.

that makes them terrorists who are in the act right in the middle of the act of doing the terror thing which is delivering these drugs to our shores.

So even though two of them, you know, survived the first attack, if they were al-Qaeda and they were on land and they were loading bombs onto a truck, you don't think we'd kill any survivors if we had to if it took a second shot?

I think we would.

And it doesn't feel like that would be illegal to me.

Now, I'm not in the military, so I'll never have to make that decision.

But are you telling me that the average person in the military or I'll say it a different way.

Are you telling me that every person in the military or, you know, almost every person would have the same opinion about what I just described?

Would they?

To me, it seems obvious that people would have different opinions.

So, if it's obvious that people could have different opinions about are these terrorists in the act of a terror attack or are they not?

Uh, I think Mark Kelly's argument just falls apart because I if I can't answer the question, are you telling me that just being in the military would have helped me?

I doubt it.

Do do you think that they had a training class that covered that you exact situation?

I doubt it.

I doubt they had any training that was specific to that.

And I don't think that the generic understanding of what's legal and the generic understanding of what a terrorist is.

I don't think that gets you there.

I I think that's a genuine gray area.

So, to Kelly's argument that anybody in the military would know the difference between a legal and an illegal act, that doesn't even feel like it's close to being true.

I feel like most of the things in the real world are messy and that there would be just all kinds of gray area.

This is just an obvious one.

And it, you know, we didn't even have to look for a weird example, right?

I'm literally taking the example that's the headline in the news right now.

If if the headline that's in the news right now, even that one, we can't decide if that's a clear case of illegality or not, what's the next one going to be?

Anyway, terrible argument, but it's getting more interesting because apparently there is some existing law that I believe has not been used maybe for I don't know decades or hundreds of years, but there's some law that says that it uh it's a felony with up to 10 years in prison for anyone quote with intent to interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the US military or naval forces.

is uhoh is literally a felony for what the uh arguably, you know, court would have to decide, I guess, but it looks like a felony that the six Democrats even made that video cuz don't you think that they would have known that that would have uh an impact on interfering or impairing or influencing the loyalty, morale, or discipline.

I I feel like you can make the case.

I don't know that any, you know, jury would necessarily convict people for free speech.

You know, probably free speech would win, I'm guessing.

But this is a real risk if you were one of the one of the people telling them the military that, you know, maybe they're going to be getting illegal orders more than they've ever gotten before.

I don't know.

That looks pretty pretty sketchy.

Uh, also another Elon Musk um ism coming from his recent podcast.

I would love to give credit to who was interviewing him because I got a lot of good stuff, but I did not see it in what I was looking at.

So, I apologize.

If one of you knows who this podcast was with, put it in the comments so at least the other people can see it.

I want to give him a shout out because he did a really good job getting some good stuff.

So Elon Mus was talking about what Doge and the Doge experience taught him.

He said it was uh like a very interesting side quest, which is a funny way to put it.

He said fraudsters necessarily will come up with a very sympathetic argument.

They're not going to say, "Give us money for fraud." Uh, he went on.

It's going to be like, "Save the baby pandas NGO," which is like, "Who doesn't want to save the baby pandas?

They're adorable." Uh, but then it turns out no pandas are being saved in this thing.

It's just corruption essentially.

And then you're like, "Uh, well, can you send us a picture of the panda?" And they're like, "No." >> >> and he goes, "Okay, well, how do we know it's going to be pandas then?" And that does pretty well capture my understanding of what our government and the NOS's and where all our own money is going.

I did not know that before Doge.

My entire understanding of the country, the the debt, the government, all of that changed radically when I learned what Elon Musk is describing is actually the normal way we're operating.

If this had been a a oneoff, like, well, there was that one time the band people pulled one over on us.

No, it's not one time.

It's the only way it works.

It's a universal effect.

It's not the exception.

It's the way everything works.

I didn't know that.

I mean, that would be beyond my most cynical, skeptical view of how anything works.

I had no idea.

I did know, to my small credit, I did know that at the city level 100% of things are corrupt.

I've been saying that for a while.

um the city, the people who are allocating money, your tax money for city services, of course they're corrupt.

you know, maybe not day one, maybe not the first person who ever gets the job, but over time, you're going to attract the people who know, you know, if I were the mayor of this smaller city, uh, I'll bet I could direct these contracts to my friends, and I'll bet they would find some way to repay me that was not easily trackable.

So over time, our system largely guarantees because we don't do any real audits in government.

It largely guarantees it's going to be corrupt.

You just have to wait a little while.

You know, the the only question is, have you waited long enough for the corrupt people to get in and never leave?

Because why would you ever leave?

I mean, once you get in there, if you're gonna stay, you're gonna stay.

So Doge completely changed my view of the world.

And that's a big deal because I think same happened with other people.

Speaking of Tim Walsh, governor of uh Minnesota.

So Minnesota Department of Human Services, I guess there are 480 employees who have signed on to the idea that uh the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been stolen by mostly Somali related gangs um who were pretending to have saved the panda and other charitable things, but really they were just completely corrupt.

And they sold they they stole hundreds of millions.

And uh you wonder how is that even possible?

How do you how do you how do you steal hundreds of millions over a lengthy period of time and nobody catches you?

Nobody there's no red flag.

Well, according to 480 people in the Department of Human Services in Minnesota, Tim Walsh was in fact informed on multiple occasions about all the red flags of corruption.

And instead of looking into it and and stopping the corruption, what do you think he did?

Take a guess.

Tim Walson, who is a Democrat, not only a Democrat, but the one that Kla Harris thought would be good choice for her number two, her vice president.

What What do you think?

What do you think he did the multiple times that credible people said, "Hey, it looks like they're stealing gigantic amounts of our money.

Maybe we should look into this." What do you think he did?

Well, I wasn't there, but according to the Department of Human Services, 480 people, he retaliated against the whistleblowers.

The worst thing a human can do if you're in government is to punish the whistleblowers.

Now, what' they say?

They said, uh, he disempowered the Office of Legislative Auditor.

Oh, so they at least had some handwaving at an audit, but he disempowered it, so they wouldn't be effective.

Uh, he allowed agencies to disregard their own audit findings.

Oh, okay.

Well, you can do the audit and you can find problems, but then we're going to ignore them.

And uh and then he he retaliated against the whistleblowers.

So that it it seems like Minnesota was a Ukraine um Zalinski level corruption.

We're not talking about small dollars.

We're not talking about, you know, a governor guided a contract to his cousin.

We're talking about enormous organized theft.

And I can't believe that Walsh had no no benefit from that.

Like why would he try so hard to keep the criminals in in uh in power?

I don't know.

It also makes me wonder if that's the reason he was chosen as vice president.

You know how we speculate that uh the people who rise to the top at the Democrat side, we speculate that it's only because they are criminals and that the other people who are also criminals want to make sure that they have, you know, some kind of blackmail against them.

But really, it's just a big criminal enterprise.

So the people who are themselves criminal make sure that they only choose as their running mate in this case another criminal so that if that criminal ever decided to turn them in, they would then themselves be turned in.

So you've got this mutually assured destruction thing.

And I would have said honestly a few years ago I would have said that's nonsense and that that just sounds like conspiracy thinking.

It's like come on.

Come on Scott.

Do you really think that Kamla picked for her vice president the most criminal person they could find because that's the person they could control?

Really Scott?

Do you think that actually happened in the real world?

Yes, I don't have proof, but come on.

I mean, it's just starting to look so obvious that the Democrat party is just a large criminal organization that depends on having people in it who aren't willing to talk to turn in the other people who are in it.

It doesn't look like that's necessarily the case on the Republican side, but I wouldn't rule it out, right?

There could be some pockets of that on both sides.

So, um Trump was asked about uh Tim Walls and he said uh that Tim was quote the seriously governor of Minnesota that he does nothing either through fear, incompetence or both.

Uh Trump wrote that in a truth social.

So then Kristen Welker of uh Meet the Press a asked Tim Walsh about Trump's statement that he was quote um seriously And Wal said we cannot allow this to be normalized.

You can't use that language.

Well, you can, but you shouldn't.

He said, um, well, you know, here I'm going to agree with Tim Walson.

Um, I don't think that Trump should have called him seriously because I don't think there's anything serious about that guy.

Okay, you were going to do it if I didn't.

Um, I don't love the use of that word.

I I understand why people don't want it to be used.

It's, you know, there there are too many people who have genuine, you know, disabilities, etc.

So, it's not my first choice, but I like free speech.

And I do enjoy when Trump entertains his base because it is pretty entertaining uh while he's doing his job.

You know, Trump is the only president who can have an entire floor show of entertainment.

And that's what I would call this.

It's like a floor show of great entertainment just to watch how people react.

Just to watch how Meet the Press handled it, just to make the dumbest Democrats obsess on it, just to make them think of whatever is the least important thing that's happening in the world and and get them to treat it like it's the most important.

That's funny.

and and the fact that the the base I'm pretty sure that the Republican base thinks it's just funny.

Now, a lot of people probably are where I am, which is I wouldn't use the word in public.

I mean, not the way he used it.

I wouldn't do it, but I don't care that he did because, you know, Trump is a unique character who oversteps the bounds of, you know, polite conversation routinely.

Once you get used to it, it doesn't seem like the end of the world.

It just feels like he's doing a bit.

And the bit is how angry can I make them?

how how much time can I make them spend talking about that and not about me, you know, not about me policy-wise.

So, I kind of love that he does it.

It's very funny.

Um, so CNN and uh Brian Stelter uh was not happy that the White House has a page on the internet dedicated to all the hoaxes that come out of the media.

And uh so uh Brian Stelter was saying that uh the White House has launched a web page that targets reporters.

Well, does it target reporters or does it report when reporters are hoaxing and you know fake?

Well, I would I would argue it's the latter.

But then Brian Stelter says uh he thinks that Trump is doing it, in other words, that the page exists for the purpose of quote delegitimizing the media.

To which I say, uh yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly why they do it.

You didn't discover this.

That's the whole point of it is to delegitimize the media.

But was the media legitimate before that page went up or is the page a response to the fact that the media is not legitimate?

Well, you know my opinion.

If the media had been legitimate, then I would not be in favor of a page that, you know, incorrectly said that they had had lots of hoaxes.

But because the hoaxes that are listed are genuinely hoaxes or at least you know fake news.

If they weren't genuine examples and if there were not lots of them and if they were not spread across multiple you know media well then I'd say you know that's going too far.

It's wasting my tax dollars.

You know why are you putting up this page of lies?

But that's not what's happening.

the the the hoax page that the White House put up is because there are a whole bunch of hoaxes.

Yeah, he is delegitimizing the media.

Is that bad?

No, delegitimizing hoaxers is exactly what we need.

So, thank you for that.

All right.

So, uh, Amy Clolobachar, Democrat, um, she was also on CNN and CNN asked her this question.

Does Minnesota have a problem with gangs roaming the streets?

Now, that would be her state.

So, what do you think she said to the question, does Minnesota have a problem with gangs roam roving the street?

Because apparently that is a problem.

But what would Amy Clolobachar say?

Because if she says yes, gangs are roaming the streets that would suggest that maybe Trump is doing the right thing by sending the National Guard.

So, she can't really agree with something that I think is just observably true.

Um, and it would be the reason that uh CNN even asked the question, does Minnesota have a problem with gangs roping the roaming the streets?

So, Cloverar's answer was quote, "Every state has a problem with crime." Uh, really, does every state have a problem with that kind of crime?

Because that was a pretty specific question.

The question that was not asked is, "Does Minnesota have crime?" Nobody asked that.

Of course, every state has crime.

They're talking specifically about gangs roaming the streets.

I don't know if you've ever been to Hawaii.

Do you know what you never see in Maui?

Gangs roaming the streets.

Now, does that mean there's no crime?

Well, even in Maui, which is very safe, there's a little bit of crime.

I've never seen any, but I'm sure it's there.

What about uh Alaska?

What about Rhode Island?

Is there a big problem in Rhode Island with the the gangs roaming the streets?

All right.

Well, so um Clolobachar was not really finding a high ground and she was not really reframing it like Steve Jobs did when his phone was had that uh problem with the antenna.

Uh you've heard me tell that story before.

She just changed the subject, which is pretty much all you need to know about that.

Well, there's uh more news from Venezuela.

Apparently, u prior to Trump closing the airspace above Venezuela or declaring that it was closed, um he had a conversation, which we didn't know about till now, with Maduro, now phone conversation, I guess.

And Maduro was apparently asking for um some assurances that he would get some kind of a that I think he and his family or maybe some of his top people would get pardons um or I don't know what the right word is, but basically not be held responsible for global amnesty.

He wanted global amnesty for all of his alleged crimes and uh I think for some other people around him.

Trump said, "Nope." Apparently, it was a hard no.

So, nope.

No embassy.

And Trump told him allegedly that uh his only option is to leave to just literally get out of Venezuela and abandon his position.

Or something very bad was about to happen.

And we don't have to spell it out, but have you noticed that a big part of our navy is sitting off of your coast?

Did you know that we have a lot of military assets that are within striking distance?

And Trump has already said that the ground war against Venezuela is imminent.

So Trump is apparently um doing the Trumpian thing where he has the upper hand and he's giving up nothing.

Um he's basically saying, "Would you like to be alive tomorrow?

That's all you have to decide because there's one way you can do it.

You have to leave right away with no asurances.

Do you think if he left with no asurances?

Maduro, if he do you think if he left that we would leave him alone because hey, well, he's gone now.

Well, I don't think he thinks that would happen and I don't think so either.

I've got a feeling if he leaves the safety of Venezuela, um, it's not going to make him more safe.

I feel like he might be doomed in every scenario, but he might be able to live a little bit longer if he leaves Venezuela.

So, Trump is giving him really no good choices or or choices that would look good to him.

I think I think Maduro tried to negotiate that he would still have some control over the Venezuelan military.

Well, obviously that's a hard no.

No, how about you have no control over the military and you just leave.

So things uh things are coming to a head there.

And apparently after that conversation, which did not result in a an agreement for anything, that's when Trump decided to close the airspace over Venezuela um with military means.

So Maduro's probably had a really bad weekend because he's deciding which way he wants to die or maybe be jailed for life.

But uh the one thing that's not going to happen, I believe that Trump has removed from him any illusion he might have had that he can sort of keep the status quo, still be in charge.

He's either going to be taken out militarily, that seems to be the clear indication here, or he can leave the country and be exposed to all manner of risks once he's outside of his little bubble.

uh and those are his only choices.

So given that he only has those choices and given that I'm sure Trump and the military will keep squeezing so that he knows that this is not a bluff.

And by the way, this is not a bluff.

Yeah, you you could you know the difference, right?

And even we can tell the difference of what would be a bluff and what is okay, this is just going to happen.

This is in the category of definitely not a bluff.

I'm pretty sure that Maduro is not going to be there in a year.

You know, maybe a month from now, you anything could happen, but I think pretty soon, pretty soon.

So, we'll keep an eye on that.

Here's a uh here's a thing I've been wondering about with AI.

So Sam Alman uh you all know him creator of founder of uh chat GBT open AI he so he argued in a blog post that he wrote earlier this year that uh the intelligence of an AI model uh roughly equals the log of the resources used to train and run it.

So in other words that you could you could predict how smart your AI would be based on the inputs.

You know if you gave it more input there would be some reliable way to know how much smarter it got from that input.

And uh and that there might be a predictable um equation there.

Now he's calling it the uh the log of the resources used to train and run it.

So that would be the the equation essentially to to predict.

And then it was I saw an article that was sort of compared to Moore's law.

You all know Moore's law with microchips.

Uh the idea that the number of uh I don't know circuits on a chip would double every x amount and that therefore the chips would get faster in a predictable way across decades.

And then we observe that sure enough Moore's law has held amazingly over decades.

Now did you ever wonder why Moore's law works?

How in the world did Gordon Moore know that the technology would increase at just this rate to get the doubling that he had predicted every x whatever?

How did he know that?

And what makes that necessarily true?

And I still don't know the answer to that.

So I asked Grock, you know, what's the logic behind Moore's law?

We do observe that it seems to have been predictable.

You know, it did seem to predict from many years ago.

It did predict where we would be now.

So it's not nothing.

I mean, it predicts.

And I've told you before that the closest you can get to understanding reality is if your worldview accurately predicts.

And this does.

So that's not nothing.

That's that's a lot.

But why why does it work?

And Grock said the logic behind it is that the number of transistors on a microchip roughly doubles every two years.

Well, costs stay the same or drop.

To which I say, why why do the number of transistors on a microchip roughly double every two years?

Why what what is the law of physics or any other law that makes that true?

And there's no real answer to that.

So here's what I think.

I think it's marketing.

If you were in the microchip business and you wanted to make sure that you um could sell the the upgrade forever, it's like, well, we got a great chip this year, but wait till you see what we have next year.

So, buy it this year.

Next year, you're going to want to get that doubling.

Or two years from now, you're going to want to get that doubling.

So, you better buy the new one.

Oh, wait.

Now we have another doubling.

So, I don't know this to be true, but for a long time, I've suspected that we're being completely bamboozled by what is just marketing and that the marketing pretends that Moore's law is true and then the technology people design to that truth.

So in other words, it's not necessarily true that Moore's law holds, but rather than have a an unpredictable bumpy ride toward better chips.

If you treat it like it's super predictable, then everybody can make their plans and say, "Okay, well, I need this one now, but in two years, I know I'll have to upgrade." I think it's just marketing.

Am I wrong?

Because it's weird that if you even look for why why the law applies, there's not really an answer to it.

They just sort of observe that it does.

I think it's marketing.

All right.

But, uh, if I'm wrong about that, I would find that interesting.

So, let me know if if you have a better idea what's going on.

And it makes me wonder if the AI has the same situation that uh maybe we're, you know, we want to make it look like it's predictable, but maybe it's not.

Well, over in Israel, Netanyahu has officially asked for a presidential pardon for what are his alleged uh corruptions.

So he and his wife Netanyahu and his wife are being um accused of accepting more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods including cigars, jewelry, and champagne from billionaires in exchange for political favors and maybe uh some favorable coverage from Israeli media outlets uh which is sort of separate.

Now, let me give you my take on that.

I don't know if this is true.

I mean, Netanyahu would say it's political lawfare and it's, you know, not based on anything real.

But how much do you think Netanyahu could earn if he were out of office and giving speeches?

What what do you think would be the market value of one speech by Netanyahu if he were out of office tomorrow?

I think it would be over $100,000, wouldn't it?

So when you say that over some amount of time he allegedly accepted $260,000 worth of luxury goods, including things like cigars and champagne.

Does that mean that some billionaire invited him to his house and they had expensive cigars and champagne and then maybe the billionaire asked him for a favor when they were done?

Is is that what he's being accused of?

Because that's not much of a crime.

I mean, I'm not even sure it is a crime.

Can you not enjoy expensive cigars and expensive alcohol with somebody who is a billionaire who might also want something?

But isn't that true of everybody?

Everybody who talks to a politician wants something.

So it's a pretty small crime if the two sight to see is first of all you know goods like champagne.

I mean, how much is, you know, what are we talking about?

It is Netanyahu gonna sell out Israel for a really good bottle of alcohol?

I don't think so.

Is Netanyahu going to sell out Israel because he got good cigars?

Like, how good are these cigars?

So, let me be clear.

I'm not uh I'm not defending Netanyahu and I don't know what he did or didn't do, but I'm just commenting that his income potential just as being who he is is way bigger than this.

So even if he had done exactly what they said, how much influence would this have on his decisions given that he could make way more money than that with a few speeches?

I don't know.

does feel like it's small ball.

Um, and we'll see if he gets the pardon.

I would bet against it.

Um, but it doesn't seem like the biggest problem in the world, even if he did exactly what they said.

All right.

Um, also in Israel, according to AFP, they killed 40 Hamas fighters in Gaza who are in tunnels.

Don't you wonder how many how many terrorists are left in those tunnels?

It does doesn't it seem to you that it's going to be sort of that uh Japanese World War II thing where there's going to be somebody in a tunnel that stays there for 20 years.

I don't know how that would eat, but uh they're still in tunnels now.

So 40 of them got killed.

Um, apparently their assumption that there's still some number of people still in tunnels while the Israeli army controls the surface.

Um, below the surface, there might be this whole civilization of not that many at this point, but maybe dozens of people who are just figuring out how to get out of the tunnel without dying.

And then uh Israel apparently has now deployed for the first time their iron beam laser defense system for shooting down missiles and and drones.

And I guess that's just going into operation now.

And it makes me wonder if they had that up and running um during the the worst of the attacks, how much a difference would it make?

And how much of a difference is it going to be when uh any country that's attacked with drones and missiles has has a laser defense system?

Because if it works, everybody's going to have one, right?

At least all our allies will have one.

Um, I feel like that could change everything because right now the anybody who could send a deadly drone into enemy territory would have an advantage because they could send lots of drones until you know you overwhelmed the defenses.

But if you had a really good laser beam defense system, um, it would look like Babylon 5.

What were the shadow?

Was that the name of the aliens that had these laser beams out of their ships?

If you've never seen uh if you've never seen Babylon 5, you don't know what I'm talking about.

But it seems to me that one good laser defense system could take out an awful lot of uh drones and missiles over time.

Maybe version 1.0 I know is not, you know, not the be all end all, but assuming, you know, some rate of progress of improving the laser beams, uh maybe the advantage will go back to the ground and maybe the drones won't have as much advantage, but then the drones will get better.

So, we'll see.

Um I saw a post by Mike Cernovich today.

He said that uh focusing on Islam hides the real problems.

He said, "NOS's who steal our money to bring in low IQ people who can't function in the US." And he says about IQ, that's what you're not supposed to notice, IQ and civilization.

Um, I've I've made a similar point um over time, which is if we can't treat IQ like it really matters, how could we really survive?

because IQ is probably among the top variables that you should consider with not just immigration but hiring almost anything.

Uh IQ should be like right at the top of things that will predictably make a difference.

And it it feels to me that even though Trump is provocative when he talks about Tim Walls being I feel like we may be entering a point where you can talk about IQ without being called a racist because you know that's what's going to happen, right?

So we might be on the verge of something good if we just can talk about it.

Can you just let us talk about it without getting cancelled?

You don't have to agree with us, us being, you know, whoever would have the same opinion as me and in this case, Mike Cernovich, but you don't have to agree with us, but can we even talk about it because it seems pretty darn important to me that uh the the smarter the people you bring in, the better your country is going to be.

So maybe we're seeing a little bit of movement in that direction.

Um, let me just skip that story.

Oh, also Elon Musk um was asked in the podcast I was talking about earlier about simulation theory and he went on and explained his view that uh statistically speaking we're more likely a simulation than not.

And uh of course a lot of people don't agree with that and you probably know that uh I believe that we're a simulation and uh I like being on the same side as Elon Musk because it's sort of a philosophy slashlogic slashiq question.

Um and here's what I realized.

You can't really have a debate about simulation with someone who is religious.

Not because they're wrong.

And and I have to say this really carefully.

I'm not religious.

So when I look at it, I'm just looking at uh how do I calculate the odds of this versus the odds of that?

But I'm I'm unencumbered by um a religious starting place.

But and I also remind you that I'm very pro- relligion.

I just don't happen to be a believer.

I think that the people who are believers have a clear advantage in life.

It's a it's a lifestyle, you know, hack.

I think it makes you and your family more successful.

So, I'm very pro Christianity.

Very pro.

I just, you know, can't get there with my own belief system.

So my my take is if if you argue the simulation, the idea that we're uh literally programmed by some other entity, that you can't have that conversation really with a believer because the believer has to start with a conclusion and then and then reason backwards because nothing's going to talk you out of believing in your God.

Like that's not going to happen because somebody said, "Well, what about the simulation?" You're not going to abandon your religion.

So if you're already starting with the end point, there is a God.

God made us.

There's no nowhere to go on that.

And that's okay.

All right.

If that sounds like a criticism, it's the opposite.

If if you're starting with the assumption that there's a, you know, God of the Christian Bible, I think you've picked a really good lifestyle.

I think you have an advantage in life and I'm all for you embracing that for the rest of your life, teaching your kids, spreading the word.

All for it.

But let's not pretend that you're starting from zero and and you're trying to logic your way into the simulation or logic your way out of Christianity.

It's not it's not the right domain.

You know, if you didn't get there by logic, and I don't think most people get there by logic.

You can't be talked out of it with logic.

You've heard that before, right?

You can't talk somebody out of something that they talk themselves into.

I want to say irrationally, but that sounds like an insult and that's not what's intended.

I mean, belief and faith are their own domain.

You know, logic and facts, very important, but separate domain.

They can often work together.

It doesn't mean that you're, you know, if if you have a religious belief, it doesn't m it doesn't mean that you're somehow, you know, unable to do reason.

Of course, you can you you can fit them together very well.

But having a a debate with somebody who's starting with the answer, I've never seen that work.

And again, I want to be as complimentary to religious people as I can because I think you have a clear advantage in life.

And uh I'm all for it.

Um and I also noted, and this got people pretty worked up, uh that when people debate the simulation theory with me, their arguments sound to me like word salad.

Now, if you don't know me and you haven't followed me for a while, that would sound like I said, I know the answer and you don't.

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying that to my ears it sounds like word salad, but there are two possibilities as somebody pointed out in the comments.

One possibility is that I have the right answer and the people who have the wrong answer are, you know, confused and so it sounds like word salad.

But the other possibility that's exactly equally possible is that the problems on my end.

Will you will you give me that?

Will you give me that I'm completely aware that the reason it might sound like word salad is because my brain isn't quite, you know, processing things correctly because that that would feel the same to me.

So when I say it sounds like word salad, don't take that to mean I'm right and you're wrong because that I don't know.

I don't know who is right.

I just know what it sounds like.

And I would also say that a lot of people argue the consciousness argument and they say, "But Scott, you can't get a digital being to have a consciousness and yet humans have a consciousness.

So therefore, you lose the argument because if if these digital beings don't have a consciousness, well, they're obviously not what we are because we've got a consciousness." To which I say that depends how you define consciousness.

If I get to define it the way I think is a good definition of consciousness, you could definitely give that to a digital being.

If you have a different definition of what consciousness is, it's entirely possible that nobody could program whatever your version is.

So sometimes you think you're arguing from, you know, a common understanding, but I think that consciousness, we never really agree what that is.

So I can't really have a debate with you about whether a digital being has consciousness if you don't think consciousness means the same thing that I do.

So you kind of can't get there from here.

um debating the simulation hypothesis and then I saw somebody else uh attack my description of it as a hypothesis.

They said, "Scott, you know, first of all, it's not a hypothesis technically." All right, but is that really an argument?

It is what it is if I call it a hypothesis or not.

So um I I think we will forever be in uh you know on different sides of whether a simulation hypothesis is credible or not and I don't mind that we don't have to agree on everything all the time.

All right ladies and gentlemen that is all I wanted to say for today.

Uh kind of a fun day in the news.

We'll keep an eye on the stock market and see what happens today.

But I'm going to say a few words privately to uh my beloved subscribers on locals who I don't spend enough time with.

But the rest of you, I will see you tomorrow.

I hope you got something out of this and uh have a wonderful Monday.

All right, locals.

I'm going to be with you in

Come on in. It is good to see you again.

I tell you, it feels like it's been

forever, even though it was only

yesterday. But that's how much I missed

you. Oh, wait a second. Whoa. What is

that? Hold on. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Ah, it's okay. It's just the Dilbert

calendar.

It was so amazing that I thought, well,

what can it be? But if you're not done

shopping, get your Dilbert calendar from

amazon.com. It's the only place you can

get it.

All right, now that I've done that

little sales pitch,

I guess we'll have to get serious. I got

a show for you today. Wow. So good.

Good morning everybody and welcome to

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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and

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All right, let's see what's happening.

Um, is there uh anything that I've been

saying for years that is now the subject

of scientific revelation?

Yes.

According to Eric Nolan on Cypost, did

you know that participating in activist

groups is linked to increased narcissism

and psychop psychopathy

over time? Well, it turns out that uh

according to science,

um if you happen to already be a

narcissist or a psychopath, you're more

likely [laughter]

you're more likely to get involved in uh

in activist groups. But not only does it

work in that direction, but if you are

not especially narcissistic or

psychopathic,

uh being involved in one of those uh

activist groups might turn you into it.

So, it's a sort of a two-way thing.

Now, does that sound like something that

surprises you? Totally. No, because

you're probably in the same bubble I am.

And conservative thinkers have been

saying this for years. I mean, several

years. When was the first time Jordan

Peterson

uh told you that uh the what is it? The

cluster B personalities tend to be on

the left and they tend to be in activist

groups. So, we kind of saw that one

coming. No big surprise there.

Well, did you know according to the

University of California Riverside that

the soybean oil, the oil, the soybean

oil has a hidden fat derived molecule

that might fuel obesity.

In other words, uh soybean oil makes you

fat.

I don't think it happens to every single

person, but uh there's a lot of it. Have

you ever done an experiment where you go

to the grocery store and try to find any

packaged item has to be packaged that

doesn't have soy in it? Have you ever

done that experiment? You you could

start at the end of the shelves for

whatever section you're on. Doesn't

matter what section. Then pick up the

first package you see and and see if

there's any soy product in it. There

will be. Then put it back. go to the

very next thing next to it. There's soy.

I I once looked

like for probably an hour to see if I

could find one damn thing that didn't

have soy in it. Now, there might be some

obvious exceptions, like if you're

buying something that only has one

ingredient, you know, it's not

necessarily soy, but if you have

anything that has multiple ingredients

in it, oh yeah, you're eating soy.

So, I don't know if the soy beans and

the soy oil have the same impact, but

beware. Well, Aira the Dawn

um has released a little preview of

another piece of music that features me

uh as the vocalist.

[clears throat] It's so funny to hear

myself say that, that uh that I'm the

least musical person in the world. Yeah,

I play a little bit of drums. That's

about it. But uh to to live in a world

in which Kira the Dawn has incorporated

my podcast voice as sort of a a layer in

his music. It's kind of really

innovative and fun. And I guess he's

going to drop the album that would have

a number of songs that he put together

like that that would feature my my voice

and his music. So that's coming December

19th. But there's a preview if you want

to see one of the new ones that's on my

feed or you can find it on Akira the

Dawn's feed. Anyway,

um did you know

well you you're going to know in a

moment that uh according to Newsmax Mark

Swanson's writing that uh according to a

poll 63% pled say a four-year degree is

not worth the cost.

um and that more than six and 10

registered voters think a four-year

degree is not worth the cost according

to new NBC News poll.

Now, so the the respect

I guess that's the right word for a

four-year degree is sort of at an

all-time low or at least in the modern

in modern times it's low. Do you think

that that is

first of all a good representation of

reality?

I think it is a good reputation good

representation of what people think

about the college degree. But do you

think they're just being influenced by

the fact that it's too expensive? And if

you ask somebody who doesn't have one,

what are they going to say?

>> [clears throat]

>> If I did not have a four-year degree

and you asked me today, uh, how

important is it? I'd probably say,

totally unimportant.

Yeah, you shouldn't get one. And then

I'd go off and get one. So, I had an

advantage. So, here's my advice.

It's probably not essential that you get

a four-year degree,

but it's a competitive world. So, if you

can get one, you know, if it's within

your financial and or other abilities,

you should definitely get one

because you're going to be competing

against people who don't have one. And,

you know, maybe you're lucky and you get

an employer who genuinely doesn't care.

you know, there are more of them every

day, but the odds of running into

somebody who does care, you know, maybe

because they have one themselves or they

went to the same school or whatever,

it's pretty high. So, I would say from a

maybe a logical perspective, it's not as

necessary as it used to be. But if

you're looking at it from a strategic

um employee perspective, yeah, you

should get one. If you can do it without

burdening yourself financially for the

rest of your life. Now, you don't want

to do it at all costs. You want to do it

at a, you know, reasonable cost for your

resources. But yeah, I would definitely

I would definitely play the advantage if

you if you have the option. Um, you know

what Poly Market is? It's a one of those

betting sites. It's the big betting

site. Well, apparently, um, the betting

sites are more accurate than opinion

polls.

So, once people put their money on it,

they're way better at predicting than if

you just say, "Hey, what do you think?"

Um, so the uh I guess one of the

founders or the CEO was talking about

that and uh

so keep an eye on poly market because

it's going to tell you more than

opinion. However,

it makes me ask this question. Don't you

think that if you had some way to know

who had been really good at predicting

in the past

that you'd like to see just those people

predicting the next thing?

Wouldn't that be a lot better?

Why would I take the average of people

who are terrible at predicting?

Meaning that they didn't win anything,

you know, because you could see if they

ever won anything on Poly Market. Why

would I want to see the average of the

people who never were right mixed in

with the average of the people who were

right most of the time? What the hell

good is that? [laughter]

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if you

could go to Poly Market and say, "Show

me the people who have been right more

than 60% of the time on whatever topic

it is." Of course, that would be better.

How about um if it's something that

maybe is a new category or something,

wouldn't you like to see the people who

were the most well-informed,

why would I why would I take the average

of people who were poorly informed on

the topic? Let's say the topic is

crypto.

Do I really need to see, you know, my

idiot? Well, I won't say that, but um do

I want to see my plumbers's opinion on

crypto

mixed in with David Sachs opinion?

No. No, I just want to see David Sax's

opinion. I don't want to see my

plumbers's opinion on crypto.

So, I think there's a whole level

where this prediction thing can can go

up a level. Uh they just have to give us

a way to know who's been good at it in

the past.

Well, Trump is teasing that he's already

picked the replacement for Jerome Powell

to be the head of the Fed. We don't know

who that will be, but he's sort of

hinting by being koi about it that uh

Kevin Hasset is likely to be picked.

That's that's not confirmed, but that's

what the smart people think. Now, Kevin

Hasset is already in the administration.

I don't know his exact job, but it's

something economic. And

um I'm pretty sure he would take the

job. I think he was asked and he said

the generic answer, which is, you know,

he would do what the president wants him

to do, which is sort of a yes. Um but

apparently the markets are poised to

love it if he gets picked because he's a

lower lower those interest rates kind of

a guy. and markets love that. So, if

Kevin Hasset does get picked,

um there there's likely to be a bump in

the market. Now, keep in mind, I do not

give financial advice.

So, there are lots of other variables.

So, maybe he gets selected on one day,

but it's the same day that some other

thing falls apart. So, it doesn't mean

the markets will definitely go up, but

uh apparently they'll be at least

friendly to him um and likely to go up.

Now, in other news, speaking of David

Sachs, New York Times had a hit piece

about him and uh he he's he's pushing

back on it pretty hard. And the the New

York Times tried to make the argument

that he had some kind of uh conflict of

interest on AI or crypto and that his

own investments somehow blah blah blah.

Well, apparently that does not stand up

to scrutiny

and there's some some idea that the New

York Times is, you know, it's just a

headpiece basically, meaning not too uh

not too reliable. Now, the funny thing

is, if you were to compare the

credibility of the New York Times

to the credibility of David Sachs, which

one's more credible?

It's not really even close.

It's Sachs. If you were to look at his

lifetime of, you know, whatever he's

said in public, um, compared to a

lifetime of what the New York Times has

reported to be true, I'm pretty sure he

would win if there were some way to

actually compare those things.

But I did notice that uh, Naval

Ravocant, who I mention often, um, he

posted about that, about the New York

Times hit piece. He said, "There are

lies, damn lies, and New York time

headlines."

Now, Naval, who I sometimes refer to as

the smartest person in the world, um,

but let's call him the wisest person we

know. So, he's famously non-political,

but this is a little bit political. Not

really. It's more about one person, but

it, you know, he's he's got one little

toe in that domain, which is unusual. He

he usually stays completely away from

the the political nonsense and you know

deals with

weightier you know life issues etc. But

here's the thing this made me that made

me think about this.

Um do you remember when Bill Clinton was

running for office and he famously said

that if you elect him you get Hillary

for free.

And before we knew before we knew who

Hillary really was, that seemed to me at

the time uh like a good deal. I thought

to myself, "Wow, really? If if you get,

you know, if you get Bill Clinton as

president, which at the time, I have to

confess,

I I was supporting Bill Clinton." And so

I thought that was a good idea. And then

when you see how uh capable Hillary is,

I thought, well, that's actually a

pretty good argument. Two for one. You

know, who hates that? Now, it turns out

Hillary was not really the one you'd

want to get for free,

but we didn't know that at the time. So,

it seemed like a good idea. Likewise,

when you when you vote for Trump, you

get me for free.

Think about it. Would I be doing what

I'm doing if Trump were not the

president or earlier um when he was

running for president? Not really. I

mean, I I became, if you can call me

political, I guess you could. I only

became political because Trump

specifically

was a persuader and you know that was my

angle in and so you got me for free. I

literally wouldn't be involved except

that Trump is the key player. And so you

get whatever value you think I might add

and reframing things or helping with

messaging, whatever, is free. I'm not

charging anybody anything. I mean,

obviously I monetize some of my feeds,

but in terms of politics, nobody's

paying me for that. I don't have any

kind of job. You get me for free. And

then I see that you know Naval

commenting on Sachs they know each other

and it occurred to me that when you hire

David Saxs for your government you get

an entire network of all the smartest

people in Silicon Valley naval just

being let's say the tip of the spear

there of smart people. You get all of

that for free. And nobody ever talks

about that because, you know, Sachs, if

you looked at his, let's call it a

rolodex, even though that's an old term,

he could call almost anybody and get a

second opinion on anything. He He's just

really wellconed, but also has a great

reputation um in the investment tech

community. And you get all of that for

free. Nobody ever talks about that.

Isn't that Isn't that funny? Because

that's really worth a lot. That the fact

that he, you know, he's one phone call

away from an intense network of the

smartest people in the world.

Um, and he could contact me if he ever

wanted to. I [clears throat and snorts]

I follow him on X. I think he follows me

back. So, you get me for free, too. if

if there was anything that I could ever

add to what he's doing. I doubt it

because it's not like I know much about

crypto or AI compared to him. Anyway, so

don't forget what you get for free.

Um Elon Musk was doing a podcast

recently where he had lots of uh

quotable moments. Um we'll talk about a

few of them. One of them was uh so Elon

has predicted that money won't have any

value in the future and instead it will

be energy. So energy will be the true

currency. And because Bitcoin

can only be created with energy because

the computer has to do a lot of

crunching to create create a new Bitcoin

and the ones that we have were created

by energy that uh Bitcoin is uh let's

see what did he say? He said uh

long-term I think money disappears as a

concept.

Money disappears. How would you like to

be the richest person in the world, Elon

Musk, and know that almost certainly

money will become worthless?

He's going to go from the richest person

on the entire planet to, "Oh, uh, you

want to you want a new car? I want a new

car. We can both have a robot go build

us one." I'm simplifying a little bit,

but uh but uh Elon predicts a world

where the AI and the robots will make

essentially everything you want close to

free and it doesn't matter who you are,

it'll just all be sort of free. Now,

that's a very optimistic prediction.

Um but he takes it further and uh I I

like having this to cling to. I don't

know if it's true, but he predicts that

uh quote uh uh I think the future we

probably won't have money. Energy and

power generation will become the de

facto currency. That part I agree with

completely and I've said the same thing.

I I believe that energy was is the new

money. Uh and maybe Bitcoin is just the,

you know, the standin for the energy.

But uh he did say um that the only way

out of debt in the future the only way

literally the only way

there [clears throat] there's not a

second way to escape our debt burden you

know our 38 trillion or whatever it will

be by the time we start turning it

around. The only way that that will get

remediated is if the world of robots and

AI is so stimulative

that it makes even our $ 38 trillion

debt seem small. Now, I might not be

doing the best job of explaining it, but

did that make sense? that essentially an

entirely new economy is about to emerge

and it will very quickly just swamp in

size the entire existing economy. So it

might be 10 times it, 100 times it. We

don't really know. It's uncharted

territory. But uh that world

according to Elon Musk, the smartest

person you know is the only way out.

Otherwise, we're literally doomed. We're

doomed. So,

uh let's hope that the robots and the AI

make a lot of money. Now, here's the

part I don't fully understand.

How could it be that money is worthless

at the same time

that we're making so much extra money

from robots and AI that it compensates

for our debt or pays it down or or

minimizes it? I I feel like there's

something missing.

Like it can't be true that

that the AI and robots become this

substitute for money. at the same time,

everybody can have everything.

Or or could it be that all the people

who hold the debt

um wouldn't care if they never got paid

back because everybody can have

everything for free?

So, I haven't quite figured out how that

all fits together, but I love hearing

that there's at least one possibility

that the smartest person, you know, who

isn't who isn't Naval, uh, that the

smartest person, you know, aside from

Naval, thinks that there is a way out.

Not guaranteed. Uh, I don't even know if

he's going as far as to say it's most

likely. He didn't say that, but at least

there's some possibility. And that's

more than I thought we had, honestly.

Well, speaking of that, um,

according to Zero Hedge, our tariff

revenue has surged to a new high. So,

31.4 billion in October. So, that's just

from tariffs. And uh what percentage of

our total uh tax revenue do you think

that is? Well, I asked uh AI chat GPT

and apparently our the amount that we

collect in income tax per month a recent

month October is a little over 400

billion.

So now we're up to something like 8%

of our entire uh incoming revenue from

taxes. About 8% of it

um is tariffs. Now that's 8% we weren't

getting before. So it's, you know, it's

on top of the 400 million billion 400

billion. And I have to admit, I didn't

think the tariffs would ever get to 8%.

And so Trump is, you know, teasing that

maybe he would get rid of income tax and

have only tariffs someday if if the

tariff number kept going up. I don't see

how that's possible,

but if I'm being honest, I also didn't

see that um tariffs would ever reach 8%

of our monthly tax revenue.

To me, that's a lot. 8%. That's pretty

impressive. So, I'm going to say all

bets are off. Um, we don't know how big

that could get. I still don't see a path

to get all the way to no income tax and

tariffs do everything, but I'm not going

to I'm not going to rule it out now. So,

I'm move I'm moving from, well, there's

no way that's going to work to I don't

know. Maybe, maybe.

Uh let's talk about Mark Kelly, Senator

Kelly, who as you know is part of what

we're calling the sedicious sex. Uh one

of the six Democrats who did the video

saying that the military should uh

should not obey illegal orders. So, he

goes on Meet the Press yesterday and uh

he was asked by the Meet the Press host

if he would refuse an order uh if he had

been in the military and he had been

asked to attack the Venezuelan drug

boats, would he consider that an illegal

order?

That is a good question.

So, if you're thinking that NBC is going

to give him a softballs, well, that

wasn't a softball. That that that

question was exactly the question I

wanted to be asked. Would you interpret

this as an illegal order if you had been

asked to blow up one of these Venezuelan

narco boats? Well, here's what Kelly

said. Rather than answer the question,

he avoided the question. Huh?

He had just said that it's sort of

common sense and any reasonable person

can certainly tell the difference

between an illegal order in the military

and a and a legal one. And then when

he's asked to get a specific example,

is this legal or illegal? He changed the

subject and he reinterpreted it by

saying, "Well, the news story recently

about Hagsath uh alleges that there was

a a secondary attack on one boat, the

first one, I think, that killed the

survivors."

So, he said, "Well, you know, we're

really talking about, you know, that

second order." But he didn't really

answer the question at all. Now, how can

he have it both ways? How can it be that

a reasonable person can definitely look

at a real world situation and they would

definitely know what is legal and what

isn't? So, there'd be no real ambiguity

in the real world. But he couldn't

answer the very first question.

He had to avoid the question because he

couldn't answer it. And you know what? I

don't know the answer to the question

either. So, even if you take the the

story about Heg Seth uh to be true, and

by the way, I don't think that is at all

uh confirmed, that that's an allegation,

a whistleblower thing. I don't know that

that will ever be confirmed that there

was a there was a standing order of some

kind that you had to kill all the people

in the boat. I don't know. Uh, I'm not

assuming that that's a real I'm not

assuming that the allegations will be

proven now. But let's say they were

just to take this this question to its

logical conclusion. What if you were in

the military, you took out the boat and

you said, "Okay, that part's legal

because they're they're terrorists

and uh you know, I've got the legal

authority to do it." But then there are

these two alleged two survivors

and then suppose you had the question of

do you take them out too or do you try

to rescue them because they they live to

which I say how does that work with

terrorists in general? If you were in an

airplane over land and you spotted some

terrorists, be they al-Qaeda or someone

else, and you knew that's who it was, so

you knew that it was al-Qaeda and they

weren't in the they weren't in the act

of doing a terrorist thing, but they

were definitely preparing for it. So,

let's say they were loading bombs onto a

truck, and you knew that they had bad

intentions for those bombs. Could you

kill those terrorists from the air if

all you knew is that it's al-Qaeda

and they were preparing some bombs?

To which I say, I don't know, but I

think it would be legal. So I asked Chad

GBT, is it illegal for the military to

kill a terrorist who is preparing a

terror act?

What do you think the AI said? I asked

chat GBT in this case, not Grock. Grock

had some issues this morning, so I was

using chat GPT. What do you think in the

comments? You tell me. Do you think that

AI said, "Oh, it's totally legal to kill

a terrorist if they're in the act of

preparing a terror act."

Well, here's what it said.

He said, "In general, under

international law and the laws of armed

conflict, it is not necessarily illegal

not necessarily illegal for a military

to target and kill a terrorist who is

actively preparing an imminent terror

attack. And then it goes on and explains

it. Now we are we are soundly into gray

area here, right? If I if we have

declared that the the terrorists I'm

sorry if we have already declared the

government that the narco boats are

terrorists because they're delivering a

weapon of mass destruction to our

shores.

that makes them terrorists who are in

the act

right in the middle of the act of doing

the terror thing which is delivering

these drugs to our shores. So even

though two of them, you know, survived

the first attack, if they were al-Qaeda

and they were on land and they were

loading bombs onto a truck, you don't

think we'd kill any survivors if we had

to if it took a second shot?

I think we would. And it doesn't feel

like that would be illegal to me. Now,

I'm not in the military, so I'll never

have to make that decision. But are you

telling me that the average person in

the military or I'll say it a different

way. Are you telling me that every

person in the military or, you know,

almost every person would have the same

opinion about what I just described?

Would they? To me, it seems obvious that

people would have different opinions.

So, [snorts] if it's obvious that people

could have different opinions about are

these terrorists in the act of a terror

attack

or are they not?

Uh, I think Mark Kelly's argument just

falls apart

because I if I can't answer the

question, are you telling me that just

being in the military would have helped

me? I doubt it.

Do do [clears throat] you think that

they had a training class that covered

that you exact situation?

I doubt it. I doubt they had any

training that was specific to that. And

I don't think that the generic

understanding of what's legal and the

generic understanding of what a

terrorist is. I don't think that gets

you there. I I think that's a genuine

gray area.

So,

to Kelly's argument that anybody in the

military would know the difference

between a legal and an illegal act, that

doesn't even feel like it's close to

being true. I feel like most of the

things in the real world are messy and

that there would be just all kinds of

gray area. This is just an obvious one.

And it, you know, we didn't even have to

look for a weird example, right? I'm

literally taking the example that's the

headline in the news right now.

If [laughter and clears throat] if the

headline that's in the news right now,

even that one, we can't decide if that's

a clear case of illegality or not,

what's the next one going to be? Anyway,

terrible argument, but it's getting more

interesting because apparently there is

some existing law that I believe has not

been used maybe for I don't know decades

or hundreds of years, but there's some

law that says that it uh it's a felony

with up to 10 years in prison for anyone

quote with intent to interfere with,

impair, or influence the loyalty,

morale, or discipline of the US military

or naval forces. is uhoh is literally a

felony

for what the uh arguably, you know,

court would have to decide, I guess, but

it looks like a felony that the six

Democrats even made that video cuz don't

you think that they would have known

that that would have uh an impact on

interfering or impairing or influencing

the loyalty, morale, or discipline.

I I feel like you can make the case. I

don't know that any, you know, jury

would necessarily convict people for

free speech. You know, probably free

speech would win, I'm guessing. But this

is a real risk if you were one of the

one of the people telling them the

military that, you know, maybe they're

going to be getting illegal orders more

than they've ever gotten before.

I don't know. That looks pretty pretty

sketchy.

Uh, also another Elon Musk

um ism coming from his recent podcast. I

would love to give credit to who was

interviewing him because I got a lot of

good stuff, but I did not see it in what

I was looking at. So, I apologize. If

one of you knows who this podcast was

with, put it in the comments so at least

the other people can see it. I want to

give him a shout out because he did a

really good job getting some good stuff.

So Elon Mus was talking about what Doge

and the Doge experience taught him. He

said it was uh like a very interesting

side quest,

which is a funny way to put it. He said

fraudsters necessarily will come up with

a very sympathetic argument. They're not

going to say, "Give us money for fraud."

Uh, he went on. It's going to be like,

"Save the baby pandas NGO," which is

like, "Who doesn't want to save the baby

pandas? They're adorable." Uh, but then

it turns out no pandas are being saved

in this thing. It's just corruption

essentially. And then you're like, "Uh,

well, can you send us a picture of the

panda?" And they're like, "No."

>> [laughter]

[gasps]

>> and [clears throat] he goes, "Okay,

well, how do we know it's going to be

pandas then?"

And that does pretty well capture my

understanding of what our government and

the NOS's and where all our own money is

going. I did not know that before Doge.

My entire understanding

of the country, the the debt, the

government, all of that changed

radically when I learned what Elon Musk

is describing is actually the normal way

we're operating. If this had been a a

oneoff, like, well, there was that one

time the band people pulled one over on

us. No, it's not one time. It's the only

way it works.

It's a universal effect. It's not the

exception. It's the way everything

works. I didn't know that. I mean, that

would be beyond my most cynical,

skeptical view of how anything works. I

had no idea. I did know, to my small

credit, I did know that at the city

level

100% of things are corrupt. I've been

saying that for a while.

um the city, the people who are

allocating money, your tax money for

city services, of course they're

corrupt. you know, maybe not day one,

maybe not the first person who ever gets

the job, but over time, you're going to

[clears throat] attract the people who

know, you know, if I were the mayor of

this smaller city, uh, I'll bet I could

direct these contracts to my friends,

and I'll bet they would find some way to

repay me that was not easily trackable.

So over time, our system largely

guarantees because we don't do any real

audits in government. It largely

guarantees it's going to be corrupt. You

just have to wait a little while. You

know, the the only question is, have you

waited long enough for the corrupt

people to get in and never leave?

Because why would you ever leave? I

mean, once you get in there, if you're

gonna stay, you're gonna stay.

So Doge completely changed my view of

the world. And that's a big deal because

I think same happened with other people.

Speaking of Tim Walsh, governor of uh

Minnesota. So Minnesota Department of

Human Services, I guess there are 480

employees who have signed on to the idea

that uh the hundreds of millions of

dollars that have been stolen by mostly

Somali related gangs um who were

pretending to have saved the panda and

other charitable things, but really they

were just completely corrupt. And they

sold they they stole hundreds of

millions. And uh you wonder how is that

even possible? How do you how do you how

do you steal hundreds of millions over a

lengthy period of time and nobody

catches you? Nobody there's no red flag.

Well, according to 480 people in the

Department of Human Services in

Minnesota, Tim Walsh was in fact

informed on multiple occasions about all

the red flags of corruption. And instead

of looking into it and and stopping the

corruption, what do you think he did?

Take a guess.

Tim Walson, who is a Democrat, not only

a Democrat, but the one that Kla Harris

thought would be good choice for her

number two, her vice president. What

What do you think? What do you think he

did the multiple times that credible

people said, "Hey, it looks like they're

stealing gigantic amounts of our money.

Maybe we should look into this." What do

you think he did? Well, I wasn't there,

but according to the Department of Human

Services, 480 people, he retaliated

against the whistleblowers.

The worst thing a human can do if you're

in government is to punish the

whistleblowers.

Now, what' they say? They said, uh, he

disempowered the Office of Legislative

Auditor. Oh, so they at least had some

handwaving at an audit, but he

disempowered it, so they wouldn't be

effective. Uh, he allowed agencies to

disregard their own audit findings. Oh,

okay. Well, you can do the audit and you

can find problems, but then we're going

to ignore them.

And uh and then he he retaliated against

the whistleblowers. So that

it it seems like

Minnesota was a Ukraine

um Zalinski level corruption. We're not

talking about small dollars. We're not

talking about, you know, a governor

guided a contract to his cousin. We're

talking about enormous

organized

theft.

And I can't believe that Walsh had no no

benefit from that. Like why would he try

so hard to keep the criminals in in uh

in power? I don't know. It also makes me

wonder if that's the reason he was

chosen as vice president.

You know how we speculate

that uh the people who rise to the top

at the Democrat side, we speculate that

it's only because they are criminals and

that the other people who are also

criminals want to make sure that they

have, you know, some kind of blackmail

against them. But really, it's just a

big criminal enterprise. So the people

who are themselves criminal make sure

that they only choose as their running

mate in this case another criminal

so that if that criminal ever decided to

turn them in, they would then themselves

be turned in. So you've got this

mutually assured destruction thing. And

I would have said honestly a few years

ago I would have said that's nonsense

and that that just sounds like

conspiracy thinking. It's like come on.

Come on Scott. Do you really think that

Kamla picked for her vice president the

most criminal person they could find

because that's the person they could

control? Really Scott? Do you think that

actually happened in the real world?

Yes, [laughter]

I don't have proof, but come on. I mean,

it's just starting to look so obvious

that the Democrat party is just a large

criminal organization

that depends on having people in it who

aren't willing to talk to turn in the

other people who are in it. It doesn't

look like that's necessarily the case on

the Republican side, but I wouldn't rule

it out, right? There could be some

pockets of that on both sides.

So, um Trump was asked about uh Tim

Walls and he said uh that Tim was quote

the seriously governor of

Minnesota

that he [clears throat] does nothing

either through fear, incompetence or

both. Uh Trump wrote that in a truth

social. So then Kristen Welker of uh

Meet the Press a asked Tim Walsh about

Trump's statement that he was quote um

seriously

And Wal said we cannot allow this to be

normalized. You can't use that language.

Well, you can, but you shouldn't. He

said,

um, well, you know, here I'm going to

agree with Tim Walson. Um, I don't think

that Trump should have called him

seriously because I don't think

there's anything serious about that guy.

Okay, you were going to do it if I

didn't. Um, I don't love the use of that

word. I I understand why people don't

want it to be used. It's, you know,

there there are too many people who have

genuine,

you know, disabilities, etc. So, it's

not my first choice, but I like free

speech. And I do enjoy [snorts]

when Trump entertains his base because

it is pretty entertaining uh while he's

doing his job.

You know, Trump is the only president

who can have an entire floor show of

entertainment. And that's what I would

call this. It's like a floor show of

great entertainment just to watch how

people react. Just to watch how Meet the

Press handled it, just to make the

dumbest Democrats obsess on it, just to

make them think of whatever is the least

important thing that's happening in the

world and and get them to treat it like

it's the most important. That's funny.

and and the fact that the the base I'm

pretty sure that the Republican base

thinks it's just funny. Now, a lot of

people probably are where I am, which is

I wouldn't use the word in public. I

mean, not the way he used it. I wouldn't

do it, but I don't care that he did

because, you know, Trump is a unique

character who oversteps the bounds of,

you know, polite

conversation

routinely. Once you get used to it,

[laughter]

it doesn't seem like the end of the

world. It just feels like he's doing a

bit. And the bit is how angry can I make

them? how how much time can I make them

spend talking about that and not about

me, you know, not about me policy-wise.

So, I kind of love that he does it. It's

very funny.

Um,

so CNN and uh Brian Stelter uh was not

happy that the White House has a page on

the internet dedicated to all the hoaxes

that come out of the media. And uh so uh

Brian Stelter was saying that uh the

White House has launched a web page that

targets reporters. Well, does it target

reporters or does it report

when reporters are hoaxing and you know

fake? Well, I would I would argue it's

the latter. But then Brian Stelter says

uh he thinks that Trump is doing it, in

other words, that the page exists for

the purpose of quote delegitimizing the

media.

To which I say, uh yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly why they do it. You

didn't discover this. That's the whole

point of it is to delegitimize

the media. But was the media legitimate

before that page went up or is the page

a response to the fact that the media is

not legitimate?

Well, you know my opinion. If the media

had been legitimate,

then I would not be in favor of a page

that, you know, incorrectly said that

they had had lots of hoaxes.

But because the hoaxes that are listed

are genuinely hoaxes or at least you

know fake news.

If they weren't genuine examples and if

there were not lots of them and if they

were not spread across multiple you know

media well then I'd say you know that's

going too far. It's wasting my tax

dollars. You know why are you putting up

this page of lies?

But that's not what's happening. the the

the hoax page that the White House put

up is because there are a whole bunch of

hoaxes. Yeah, he is delegitimizing the

media.

Is that bad?

No, delegitimizing hoaxers

is exactly what we need. So, thank you

for that.

All right. So, uh, Amy Clolobachar,

Democrat, um, she was also on CNN and

CNN asked her this question. Does

Minnesota have a problem with gangs

roaming the streets? Now, that would be

her state. So, what do you think she

said to the question, does Minnesota

have a problem with gangs roam roving

the street?

Because apparently that is a problem.

But what would Amy Clolobachar say?

Because if she says yes,

gangs are roaming the streets that would

suggest that maybe Trump is doing the

right thing by sending the National

Guard. So, she can't really agree

with something that I think is just

observably true. Um, and it would be the

reason that uh CNN even asked the

question, does Minnesota have a problem

with gangs roping the roaming the

streets? So, Cloverar's answer was

quote, "Every state has a problem with

crime."

Uh,

really,

does every state have a problem with

that kind of crime? Because that was a

pretty specific question. The [snorts]

question that was not asked is, "Does

Minnesota have crime?"

Nobody asked that. Of course, every

state has crime. They're talking

specifically about gangs roaming the

streets.

I don't know if you've ever been to

Hawaii.

Do you know what you never see in Maui?

Gangs roaming the streets. Now, does

that mean there's no crime? Well, even

in Maui, which is very safe, there's a

little bit of crime. I've never seen

any, but I'm sure it's there. What about

uh Alaska?

What about Rhode Island?

Is there a big problem in Rhode Island

with the the gangs roaming the streets?

All right. Well, so um Clolobachar was

not really finding a high ground and she

was not really reframing it like Steve

Jobs did when his phone was had that uh

problem with the antenna.

Uh you've heard me tell that story

before. She just changed the subject,

which is pretty much all you need to

know about that.

Well, there's uh more news from

Venezuela. Apparently,

u prior to Trump closing the airspace

above Venezuela or declaring that it was

closed, um he had a conversation, which

we didn't know about till now, with

Maduro, now phone conversation, I guess.

And Maduro was apparently asking for

um some assurances that he would get

some kind of a that I think he and his

family or maybe some of his top people

would get pardons

um or I don't know what the right word

is, but basically not be held

responsible for global amnesty. He

wanted global amnesty for all of his

alleged crimes and [snorts] uh I think

for some other people around him.

Trump said, "Nope." Apparently, it was a

hard no. So, nope. No embassy. And Trump

told him allegedly

[snorts] that uh his only option is to

leave to just literally get out of

Venezuela and abandon his position. Or

something very bad was about to happen.

And we don't have to spell it out, but

have you noticed that a big part of our

navy is sitting off of your coast? Did

you know that we have a lot of military

assets that are within striking

distance? And Trump has already said

that the ground war against Venezuela

is imminent.

So Trump is apparently

um doing the Trumpian thing where he has

the upper hand and he's giving up

nothing. Um he's basically saying,

"Would you like to be alive tomorrow?

That's all you have to decide because

there's one way you can do it. You have

to leave right away with no asurances.

Do you think if he left with no

asurances? Maduro, if he do you think if

he left that we would leave him alone

because hey, well, he's gone now. Well,

I don't think he thinks that would

happen and I don't think so either. I've

got a feeling if he leaves the safety of

Venezuela,

um, it's not going to make him more

safe. I feel like he might be doomed in

every scenario, but he might be able to

live a little bit longer if he leaves

Venezuela. So, Trump is giving him

really no good choices or or choices

that would look good to him. I think I

think Maduro tried to negotiate that he

would still have some control over the

Venezuelan military. Well, obviously

that's a hard no.

No, how about you have no control over

the military and you just leave.

So things uh things are coming to a head

there.

And apparently after that conversation,

which did not result in a an agreement

for anything, that's when Trump decided

to close the airspace over Venezuela um

with military means. So Maduro's

probably had a really bad weekend

because he's deciding which way he wants

to die or maybe be jailed for life. But

uh the one thing that's not going to

happen, I believe that Trump has removed

from him any illusion he might have had

that he can sort of keep the status quo,

still be in charge. He's either going to

be taken out militarily, that seems to

be the clear indication here, or he can

leave the country and be exposed

[snorts] to all manner of risks once

he's outside of his little bubble.

uh and those are his only choices. So

given that he only has those choices and

given that I'm sure Trump and the

military will keep squeezing so that he

knows that this is not a bluff. And by

the way, this is not a bluff.

Yeah, you you could you know the

difference, right? And even we can tell

the difference of what would be a bluff

and what is okay, this is just going to

happen. This is in the category of

definitely not a bluff. I'm pretty sure

that Maduro is not going to be there in

a year. You know, maybe a month from

now, you anything could happen, but I

think pretty soon, pretty soon. So,

we'll keep an eye on that.

Here's a uh here's a thing I've been

wondering about with AI. So Sam Alman uh

you all know him creator of founder of

uh chat GBT open AI he so he argued in a

blog post that he wrote earlier this

year that uh the intelligence of an AI

model uh roughly equals the log of the

resources used to train and run it. So

in other words that you could you could

predict how smart your AI would be based

on the inputs. You know if you gave it

more input there would be some reliable

way to know how much smarter it got from

that input. And uh and that there might

be a predictable

um equation there. Now he's calling it

the

uh the log of the resources used to

train and run it. So that would be the

the equation essentially to to predict.

And then it was I saw an article that

was sort of compared to Moore's law. You

all know Moore's law with microchips. Uh

the idea that the number of uh I don't

know circuits on a chip would double

every x amount and that therefore the

chips would get faster in a predictable

way across decades.

And then we observe that sure enough

Moore's law has held amazingly over

decades.

Now did you ever wonder why Moore's law

works? How in the world did Gordon Moore

know that

the technology would increase at just

this rate

to get the doubling that he had

predicted every x whatever? How did he

know that? And what makes that

necessarily true?

And [snorts] I still don't know the

answer to that. So I asked Grock, you

know, what's the logic behind Moore's

law? We do observe that it seems to have

been predictable. You know, it did seem

to predict from many years ago. It did

predict where we would be now. So it's

not nothing. I mean, it predicts. And

I've told you before that the closest

you can get to understanding reality is

if your worldview accurately predicts.

And this does. So that's not nothing.

That's that's a lot. But why why does it

work? And Grock said the logic behind it

is that the number of transistors on a

microchip roughly doubles every two

years. Well, costs stay the same or

drop. To which I say, why why do the

number of transistors on a microchip

roughly double every two years?

Why what what is the law of physics

or any other law that makes that true?

And there's no real answer to that.

So here's what I think. I think it's

marketing.

If you were in the microchip business

and you wanted to make sure that you um

could sell the the upgrade forever, it's

like, well, we got a great chip this

year, but wait till you see what we have

next year. So, buy it this year. Next

year, you're going to want to get that

doubling. Or two years from now, you're

going to want to get that doubling. So,

you better buy the new one. Oh, wait.

Now we have another doubling. So, I

don't know this to be true, but for a

long time, I've suspected that we're

being completely bamboozled by what is

just marketing and that the marketing

pretends that Moore's law is true and

then the technology people design to

that truth. So in other words, it's not

necessarily true that Moore's law holds,

but rather than have a an unpredictable

bumpy ride toward better chips. If you

treat it like it's super predictable,

then everybody can make their plans and

say, "Okay, well, I need this one now,

but in two years, I know I'll have to

upgrade."

I think it's just marketing.

Am I wrong?

Because it's weird that if you even look

for why why the law applies, there's not

really an answer to it. They just sort

of observe that it does. I think it's

marketing.

All right. But, uh, if I'm wrong about

that, I would find that interesting. So,

let me know if if you have a better idea

what's going on. And it makes me wonder

if the AI has the same situation

that uh maybe we're, you know, we want

to make it look like it's predictable,

but maybe it's not.

Well, over in Israel, Netanyahu has

officially asked for a presidential

pardon for what are his alleged

uh corruptions.

So he and his wife Netanyahu and his

wife are being um accused of accepting

more than $260,000

worth of luxury goods including cigars,

jewelry, and champagne from billionaires

in exchange for political favors and

maybe uh some favorable coverage from

Israeli media outlets

uh which is sort of separate.

Now, let me give you my take on that.

I don't know if this is true. I mean,

Netanyahu would say it's political

lawfare and it's, you know, not based on

anything real. But how much do you think

Netanyahu could earn if he were out of

office and giving speeches? What what do

you think would be the market value of

one speech by Netanyahu if he were out

of office tomorrow?

I think it would be over $100,000,

wouldn't it? So when you say that over

some amount of time he allegedly

accepted $260,000 worth of luxury goods,

including things like cigars and

champagne.

Does that mean that some billionaire

invited him to his house and they had

expensive cigars and champagne

and then maybe the billionaire asked him

for a favor when they were done?

Is is that what he's being accused of?

Because that's not much of a crime. I

mean, I'm not even sure it is a crime.

Can you not enjoy expensive cigars and

expensive alcohol

with somebody who is a billionaire who

might also want something? But isn't

that true of everybody? Everybody who

talks to a politician wants something.

So it's a pretty small crime if the two

sight to see is first of all you know

goods like champagne. I mean, how much

is, you know, what are we talking about?

It is Netanyahu gonna sell out Israel

for a really good bottle of alcohol? I

don't think so. Is Netanyahu going to

sell out Israel because he got good

cigars? Like, how good are these cigars?

So, let me be clear.

I'm not uh I'm not defending Netanyahu

and I don't know what he did or didn't

do, but I'm just commenting that his

income potential just as being who he is

is way bigger than this. So even if he

had done exactly what they said, how

much influence would this have on his

decisions given that he could make way

more money than that with a few

speeches? I don't know. does feel like

it's small ball.

Um, and we'll see if he gets the pardon.

I would bet against it.

Um, but it doesn't seem like the biggest

problem in the world, even if he did

exactly what they said.

All right.

Um, also in Israel, according to AFP,

they killed 40 Hamas fighters in Gaza

who are in tunnels.

Don't you wonder how many how many

terrorists are left in those tunnels?

It does doesn't it seem to you that it's

going to be sort of that uh Japanese

World War II thing where there's going

to be somebody in a tunnel that stays

there for 20 years.

I don't know how that would eat, but uh

they're still in tunnels now. So

[snorts] 40 of them got killed. Um,

apparently their assumption that there's

still some number of people still in

tunnels while the Israeli army controls

the surface. Um, below the surface,

there might be this whole civilization

of not that many at this point, but

maybe dozens of people who are just

figuring out how to get out of the

tunnel without dying.

And then uh Israel apparently has now

deployed for the first time their iron

beam laser defense system for shooting

down missiles and and drones. And I

guess that's just going into operation

now. And it makes me wonder if they had

that up and running um during the the

worst of the attacks,

how much a difference would it make? And

how much of a difference is it going to

be

when uh any country that's attacked with

drones and missiles has has a laser

defense system? Because if it works,

everybody's going to have one, right? At

least all our allies will have one. Um,

I feel like that could change everything

because right now the anybody who could

send a deadly drone into enemy territory

would have an advantage because they

could send lots of drones until you know

you overwhelmed the defenses. But if you

had a really good

laser beam defense system,

um, it would look like Babylon 5. What

were the shadow? Was that the name of

the aliens that had these laser beams

out of their ships?

If you've never seen uh [snorts]

if you've never seen Babylon 5, you

don't know what I'm talking about. But

it seems to me that one good laser

defense system could take out an awful

lot of uh drones and missiles over time.

Maybe version 1.0 I know is not, you

know, not the be all end all, but

assuming, you know, some rate of

progress of improving the laser beams,

uh maybe the advantage will go back to

the ground and maybe the drones won't

have as much advantage, but then the

drones will get better. So, we'll see.

Um I saw a post by Mike Cernovich today.

He said [snorts] that uh focusing on

Islam hides the real problems. He said,

"NOS's who steal our money to bring in

low IQ people who can't function in the

US." And he says about IQ, that's what

you're not supposed to notice, IQ and

civilization.

Um,

I've I've made a similar point um over

time, which is if we can't treat IQ like

it really matters,

how could we really survive?

because IQ is probably among the top

variables that you should consider with

not just immigration but hiring almost

anything. Uh IQ should be like right at

the top of things that will predictably

make a difference.

And it it feels to me that even though

Trump is provocative when he talks about

Tim Walls being I feel like we

may be entering a point where you can

talk about IQ without being called a

racist because you know that's what's

going to happen, right? [snorts] So we

might be on the verge of something good

if we just can talk about it. Can you

just let us talk about it without

getting cancelled? You don't have to

agree with us, us being, you know,

whoever would have the same opinion as

me and in this case, Mike Cernovich, but

you don't have to agree with us, but can

we even talk about it because it seems

pretty darn important to me that uh the

the smarter the people you bring in, the

better your country is going to be. So

maybe we're seeing a little bit of

movement in that direction.

Um,

let me just skip that story. Oh, also

Elon Musk um was asked in the podcast I

was talking about earlier about

simulation theory and he went on and

explained his view that uh statistically

speaking we're more likely a simulation

than not. And uh of course a lot of

people don't agree with that and you

probably know that uh I believe that

we're a simulation and uh I like being

on the same side as Elon Musk

because it's sort of a philosophy

slashlogic

slashiq question.

Um and here's what I realized.

You can't really have a debate about

simulation with someone who is

religious.

Not because they're wrong. And and I

have to say this really carefully. I'm

not religious.

So when I look at it, I'm just looking

at uh how do I calculate the odds of

this versus the odds of that? But I'm

I'm unencumbered by um a religious

starting place. But and I also remind

you that I'm very pro- relligion. I just

don't happen to be a believer. I think

that the people who are believers have a

clear advantage in life. It's a it's a

lifestyle, you know, hack. I think it

makes you and your family more

successful. So, I'm very pro

Christianity. Very pro. I just, you

know, can't get there with my own belief

system. So

my my take is if if you argue the

simulation, the idea that we're uh

literally programmed by some other

entity, [snorts]

that you can't have that conversation

really with a believer because the

believer has to start with a conclusion

and then and then reason backwards

because nothing's going to talk you out

of believing in your God. Like that's

not going to happen because somebody

said, "Well, what about the simulation?"

You're not going to abandon your

religion. So if you're already starting

with the end point, there is a God. God

made us.

There's no nowhere to go on that. And

that's okay. All right. If that sounds

like a criticism, it's the opposite. If

if you're starting with the assumption

[snorts]

that there's a, you know, God of the

Christian Bible,

I think you've picked a really good

lifestyle. I think you have an advantage

in life and I'm all for you embracing

that for the rest of your life, teaching

your kids, spreading the word. All for

it. But let's not pretend that you're

starting from zero and and you're trying

to logic your way into the simulation or

logic your way out of Christianity. It's

not it's not the right domain. You know,

if you didn't get there by logic, and I

don't think most people get there by

logic. You can't be talked out of it

with logic. You've heard that before,

right? You can't talk somebody out of

something that they talk themselves

into.

I want to say irrationally, but that

sounds like an insult and that's not

what's intended. I mean, belief and

faith are their own domain. You know,

logic and facts, very important, but

separate domain. They can often work

together. It doesn't mean that you're,

you know, if if you have a religious

belief, it doesn't m it doesn't mean

that you're somehow, you know, unable to

do reason. Of course, you can you you

can fit them together very well. But

having a a debate

with somebody who's starting with the

answer, I've never seen that work.

And again, I want to be as complimentary

to religious people as I can because I

think you have a clear advantage in

life. And uh I'm all for it.

Um

and I also noted, and this got people

pretty worked up, uh that when people

debate the simulation theory with me,

their arguments sound to me like word

salad.

Now, if you don't know me and you

haven't followed me for a while, that

would sound like I said, I know the

answer and you don't. That's not what

I'm saying. I'm saying that to my ears

it sounds like word salad, but there are

two possibilities as somebody pointed

out in the comments. One possibility is

that I have the right answer and the

people who have the wrong answer are,

you know, confused and so it sounds like

word salad. But the other possibility

that's exactly equally possible is that

the problems on my end.

Will you will you give me that? Will you

give me that I'm completely aware that

the reason it might sound like word

salad is because my brain isn't quite,

you know, processing things correctly

because that that would feel the same to

me. So when I say it sounds like word

salad, don't take that to mean I'm right

and you're wrong because that I don't

know. I don't know who is right. I just

know what it sounds like. And I would

also say that a lot of people argue the

consciousness argument and they say,

"But Scott, you can't get a digital

being to have a consciousness and yet

humans have a consciousness. So

therefore, you lose the argument because

if if these digital beings don't have a

consciousness, well, they're obviously

not what we are because we've got a

consciousness." To which I say

that depends how you define

consciousness. If I get to define it the

way I think is a good definition of

consciousness, you could definitely give

that to a digital being. If you have a

different definition

of what consciousness is, it's entirely

possible that nobody could program

whatever your version is. So sometimes

you think you're arguing from, you know,

a common understanding, but I think that

consciousness, we never really agree

what that is. So I can't really have a

debate with you about whether a digital

being has consciousness if you don't

think consciousness means the same thing

that I do. So you kind of can't get

there from here. um debating the

simulation hypothesis and then I saw

somebody else uh attack my description

of it as a hypothesis. They said,

"Scott, you know, first of all, it's not

a hypothesis technically." All right,

but is that really an argument? It is

what it is if I call it a hypothesis or

not. [snorts]

So

um I I think we will forever be in uh

you know on different sides of whether a

simulation

hypothesis

is credible or not and I don't mind that

we don't have to agree on everything all

the time. All right ladies and gentlemen

that is all I wanted to say for today.

Uh kind of a fun day in the news. We'll

keep an eye on the stock market and see

what happens today. But I'm going to say

a few words privately to uh my beloved

subscribers on locals who I don't spend

enough time with. But the rest of you, I

will see you tomorrow. I hope you got

something out of this and uh have a

wonderful Monday. All right, locals. I'm

going to be with you in