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Episodes › Episode #534

Episode 534 Scott Adams - Predicting, Deutsche Bank, Brennan, China, Iran

Episode #534 May 20, 2019 1:07:28 16,443 views

Representative Amash…we have a Representative Amash? Biden…the less media coverage he gets, the more we’ll like him? President Trump tweet warns Iran to never threaten us again Public warning, and US public seems to support if needed Does Iran want to give the US…an excuse to act? Does Iran want the US to say “all options are open”? AOC on climate change solutions…”especially the new technologies” AOC is open to nuclear…especially the new technologies? AOC is acknowledging risk/reward balance favors nuclear? Social media sent a message to government…it was received Simultaneous, well deserved “pat on the back” Comey’s email to staff…Brennan INSISTS dossier be included? Wouldn’t Brennan have known intel was from Russian Intel? Wouldn’t Brennan have known it would affect our election? Comey and Brennan paper trail…THEY colluded with Russia? Is the evidence overstated, where’s the counter-narrative? Cognitive blindness prevents the left from seeing the obvious? Exculpatory unknown evidence is possible…but WOW Deutsche Bank specialists look for suspicious transactions When spotted, management decides if it’s an issue or not CNN isn’t reporting how often flags are evaluated as okay “How often” is the missing KEY context 99% of flagged transactions get approved, it’s normal Atlantic story, researchers find topic experts are NOT best predictors Best predictors have…a good “talent stack” Broad experience predicts better than siloed expertise Only a few congress people have read the Mueller report, why? Because facts don’t matter? Did you expect the facts to change anyone’s opinion? If so…your filter on reality should be examined Social media higher level platform to aggregate and filter platforms? Create platform competition where none exists now? Auto-posting to multiple platforms to counter de-platforming? Users could suspend social media platforms as penalty All content on alternate platforms gives users power Slippery slopes don’t happen because a counter-force always appears Candace Owens suspension…and reversal of her suspension SPLC pushed the “Fine People” HOAX in a tweet yesterday Racially damaging and divisive, needed to be reported Do they really not know it was a HOAX? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please donate to support my YouTube channel: https://interface.my/ScottAdamsSays I also fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that. See all of my Periscope videos here… https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1nAKERDOwylGL Find my WhenHub Interface app here… https://interface.whenhub.com

Opening General Commentary

My mom. Paula. Pom pom pom. Hey, I'm back. Yes, I know it's been a long time since we had coffee, but we're gonna have some simultaneous sipping today and it's gonna be extra good because I know you've been holding back. Hey everybody, come on in here. Grab a seat. Make sure you're where you can s…

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SimultaneousSip General Commentary

t a good seat up in the front. And it's about time for the simultaneous sip. And all you need to participate in this sacred ceremony, you know, some kind of a cup or a mug or a glass. It could be a stein or a chalice,

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MainContent General Commentary

maybe a thermos, possibly a flask. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip. I'm sorry I left you yesterday. It caught me by surprise. I was a travel day. I thought I'd have time but I did not. And so today will be twice as good

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NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

. That's right. I'm taking all of the goodness you would have heard yesterday but I couldn't get to it. I'm packing it to get to today for twice as good. A coffee with Scott Adams. Let us start. So there's some politician, a Republican guy named Justin Amash, who has apparently broken ranks with th…

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MainContent The Golden Age

citizens of the United States pushing back on this idea of eliminating Iran. And if the citizens are not pushing back on it, and I don't think we are in general, obviously there's always people on both sides of everything but I don't think the public's pushing back on it. So imagine you're over in I…

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MainContent Climate & Environment

mepage. So I'm looking at how much real estate is devoted to each kind of topic. Then there's a whole bunch of stuff about how this Justin Amash is talking about impeachment. There isn't going to be any. That's a big story. It's about some person is against the president but it doesn't really matter…

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MainContent Persuasion

of Mark Schneider who's been the primary advocate about the newer nuclear technologies. You've seen us talk all the time. Many of you have helped to boost that message. You've helped me boost it on Twitter. You boosted on Periscope. Do you think that our collective boosting of that message about the…

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MainContent Media & Fake News

ded his upper echelon staff. Dude that apparently according to Comey in an email, so this was back in the beginnings of the investigation about Russia collusion. So Comey had an email that Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the Intel assessment. To which I say to myself how do you interpret…

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MainContent Two Movie Screen

tion and then upper management looked at the situation and decided to let it go. In other words they did not pursue any kind of legal or other recourse. Now is that a story? If you have never worked for a bank that looks like kind of a story doesn't it? I have worked for a bank. I have many years a…

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MainContent Media & Fake News

s, looking for exceptions, making sure all risks have been accounted for or making sure that the right people are brought into the decision. Banking. It's just banking. That was the story. That's the only thing we know. Now if it turns out that there are other facts that come out that's another stor…

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MainContent Talent Stack

r put some more money into it to justify the million I already spent. That's how artists think. Economists say that million's gone. It's just gone. I have a new decision today about whether my new hundred thousand should go in or not but it has nothing to do with the money I've already spent. So tha…

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MainContent Confirmation Bias

estion not an opinion. I want you to fact-check me here. I need somebody who's got a little more knowledge about APIs and social media platforms than I do. Could somebody create an interface, a program, an application that could post your content to any of the different platforms? Now this part I kn…

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MainContent AI & Technology

I said to myself I will mentally boycott them. But wouldn't it have been good if I had a platform I could just click them off for a week and I can give them, how about this, shouldn't the public be able to give Facebook a one week suspension? That's the way to frame it. Finally okay I accidentally g…

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Closing Politics as Persuasion

If you think that I will someday get banned keep that prediction you had. Keep that prediction in your head and see if it happens. Now today I went after, yesterday I went after the SPLC for the SPLC the Southern Poverty Law Center who is supposedly the entity which points out all the bad people on…

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My mom. Paula. Pom pom pom. Hey, I'm back. Yes, I know it's been a long time since we had coffee, but we're gonna have some simultaneous sipping today and it's gonna be extra good because I know you've been holding back.

Hey everybody, come on in here. Grab a seat. Make sure you're where you can see. Get a good seat up in the front. And it's about time for the simultaneous sip. And all you need to participate in this sacred ceremony, you know, some kind of a cup or a mug or a glass. It could be a stein or a chalice, maybe a thermos, possibly a flask. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the simultaneous sip.

I'm sorry I left you yesterday. It caught me by surprise. I was a travel day. I thought I'd have time but I did not. And so today will be twice as good. That's right. I'm taking all of the goodness you would have heard yesterday but I couldn't get to it. I'm packing it to get to today for twice as good. A coffee with Scott Adams. Let us start.

So there's some politician, a Republican guy named Justin Amash, who has apparently broken ranks with the Republicans. And he says, I have read the Mueller report and it has all kinds of impeachable conduct. It has impeachable conduct. That's pretty vague, isn't it? If your best argument sounds like this: "Scott, he did impeachable things," you're in pretty good shape.

Let me tell you what sounds very bad. "Scott murdered a guy. Scott murdered a guy named Bob." That sounds pretty bad. If somebody says, "Scott, you murdered somebody," I'm like, whoa, I'm in trouble. I'm going to jail. That's a pretty specific allegation.

Here's what I'm not worried about. "Scott may have, if you look at the totality of evidence, nothing individual that mattered too much. No crimes. Yeah, no crimes. And there was no conspiracy or anything like that. But if you look at the big picture, if you sort of get far away like in outer space, and there's a lot of it and you put a lot of things together that don't mean much, from outer space it could give you the impression, sort of a vague uneasy feeling, that there might be something that I would call a conduct, collectively speaking, which in a philosophical and maybe generic sense could be somewhere in the general vicinity of something we should at least have a conversation about impeachment." Under those conditions, how much do I worry? Not a lot. Not a lot.

Now Amash is probably being kind of clever because he's getting all kinds of attention. What was the thing that Justin Amash was most famous for before this? He was most famous for nobody ever heard of him. So Justin Amash's greatest claim to fame prior to selling out the Republicans was that nobody ever heard of him. So I guess he's done better than that now. We've heard of him. That's not nothing.

So there's something I'm sort of tracking. Changing topic a little bit about Joe Biden. I call it the Sleepy Joe. Listen, I'll give it a name. Let's say the Sleepy Joe visibility metric. Yeah, let's call that the Sleepy Joe visibility metric. It goes like this. Sleepy Joe Biden is the dominant frontrunner for the Democrats. It's the biggest story in the country politically, partly because everything else is going well.

Look for the big stories about the economy on the front page of CNN. Oh, there are none, because the economy is going well. Look for the big story about the war we're in. Oh, there isn't a big story because we're winding down wars everywhere. Look for the big story about how our Chinese trade talks are going to end the world. Oh, well that doesn't seem to be happening because again the economy is doing well.

So we've got this weird world where there isn't much to talk about except the 2020 election. It's still the biggest thing, right? So if the biggest competitor, the only person who could change the equation and maybe, you know, I have a chance of beating President Trump, that would be a big, big, big, big change in the world. It's a big story. Do you see a lot of interviews with Joe Biden? So far I've seen zero. I mean I think he's had them. I think he must have talked to the press in the last several weeks but it just kind of comes and goes.

It seems to me that the anti-Trump press either has no confidence in Biden or is hoping that the less they talk about him the less he gaffes. It seems to me that, you know, I don't know that this is any collusion but maybe collectively people have made the same idea. The more we see of Joe Biden, the more we like him. Fill in the end of this sentence. The more the public sees of Joe Biden. Now fill in the blanks. What do you think is the answer to that? The more we see him the more we'll love it? Does that work? Okay, let's try it again. The more we see of Joe Biden the more smarter things he'll say? I don't know, it doesn't quite fit. The more we see of Joe Biden the more we'll know he's young enough and vital enough to do the job? Maybe. Could be.

Or how about this one? Let's try this one on. The more we see of Joe Biden the more gaffes he'll make. Which one of those things sounds a little truer? Which one feels right? It certainly seems to me that this time, in the prior presidential election, we saw a wall-to-wall nonstop Trump, didn't we? Trump the candidate said the more I get on TV the better. And he did everything he could to be on TV and get all this free press and he got a lot of it. Joe Biden is doing exactly the opposite.

Trump made a calculation that the more Trump you saw the more likely he would get it. Think about that. Trump correctly, correctly deduced, and it's obvious he'd do this, I'm not reading minds, I think he actually said this, there are quotes of his early on, but Trump was about removing all the oxygen from the other candidates. He was about just eliminating any attention on anything but Trump. And that worked because apparently the more Trump you see the more likely you want him for your president. Not everybody of course. Half the country doesn't. But for the people who voted for him, the more they saw apparently the more they liked on average.

But Biden seems to be the opposite. Now keep watching this because it's too early. It could be that Biden isn't doing anything interesting and later he will. Excuse me. So maybe we'll see more of that.

Now the president has done his North Korea trick. He's tweeted at Iran after moving military assets into the region based on some vaguely specified risk that Iran was doing something dangerous. Maybe to do with loading missiles on boats, maybe more than that, we don't know. But Trump tweeted, and I was looking for the exact wording but it's not handy. Somebody can help me with the words here. He basically said that if Iran ever attacked the United States interests, not the homeland necessarily, but if they did something dangerous, that Iran would essentially cease to exist. Now those are my words not the president's but he essentially said that. And I thought that is such the right thing to do.

And once again this is another one of those situations where future presidents are going to have to answer to the way Trump did business in his administration. Every future president is going to be compared to how this president handled stuff. And the way he handled stuff tends to have a pattern. Have you noticed it? Step one, the Trump step is, "Oh my God he can't do that. That's too provocative. That's too dangerous. The world will explode. We should never do whatever it is that Trump says we should do." Step two is we do it anyway. So for whatever reason he gets his way and we say, "My God, my God, I can't believe he's doing this. This was everything we feared. I can't believe it. The world is gonna end." Step three you say, "Okay it did work out okay. I admit, I admit this didn't work out but there's a lot of things we don't like about this president unrelated to this." And how many times have you seen this?

Let's take North Korea. "Oh my God, my God, you can't say fire and fury. You can't be treating a leader with nuclear weapons the way you're tweeting. This will, no, okay you're doing it anyway. I see you're doing it anyway but my God don't do this. We all warned you and you're doing it." "Okay it did work out. Yes we admit this worked out exactly the way you hoped it would but man, what about Charlize Theron? What about some other thing?" You see it with trade talks with China. "Trade talks are bad. Trade, you know, trade wars are bad. It's bad, it's bad, it's bad. Okay you're doing it anyway. I see you're doing it anyway but man this is not gonna turn out okay." "The economy is doing better than anybody hoped." "Sure. Alright so this was, it turns out, looks like both the left and the right agree it was exactly the right time to get tough on trade with China. Okay but even though we were totally wrong about this and even though we were totally wrong about the way he had approached North Korea he's got other problems. I'm sure there are other things he's doing wrong. There must be other unrelated things that he's just doing completely wrong. Let's talk about those for a while."

So same thing with Iran except I think there's a little less pushback this time. Here's what I liked about his Iran warning. The first thing I like about it is that the warning is on Twitter and it's public. I love the fact that it's public because he's talking to the public of the United States and he's letting Iran see the reaction directly with no filter from the public. And so they can look at his tweet that says if you mess with us we will end you, meaning the regime in Iran, not kill all the people. That should be the proper interpretation, that we would change their regime, not that Iran would cease to exist as a country.

And so the Ayatollah can look at the comments to the tweet, and I haven't looked at them but I imagine that the comments are largely supportive of the concept that if Iran goes too far we've got a pretty dangerous president and he's unpredictable and I'm pretty sure he would use the opening to redo the Middle East. So the last thing that Iran wants to give a President Trump is an excuse to redo the map of the Middle East. What do they imagine that a President Trump would like to do? We wouldn't mind redoing the map of the Middle East if the point of it was to make it a safer place for Israel, for our other allies in the region.

So I think they're gonna look at his comments and say I do not see the citizens of the United States pushing back on this idea of eliminating Iran. And if the citizens are not pushing back on it, and I don't think we are in general, obviously there's always people on both sides of everything but I don't think the public's pushing back on it. So imagine you're over in Iran. You're looking at the biggest military ever assembled in the history of the galaxy. It's pointing all of its guns at you. You've got the most unpredictable president who, it should be said, wouldn't mind redoing the Middle East if he had a reason, if he had an excuse. At the moment he has no excuse. At the moment there's not an immediate need for him to remove the regime in Iran. Not at the moment. Do they want to give him a moment? Do they want to create an excuse that would give this president with the biggest military ever created in the galaxy in the history of humanity, do you want to give him an excuse to use some of those weapons? You don't.

So what I love is the clarity of it. I think a normal president would have said something along the lines of, "Iran, if you mess with us there will be a big response," right? Big, generic. "If you do something to us all options are on the table." Now I do like it when our government says all options are on the table. I like that as a, I've always liked that as just a standard, a good thing to say. Keeps all your options open, makes them wonder. But when Trump does it he goes way beyond all options are open. He makes it binary. If you screw with us we will end your whole country. That's as clear as you can get.

Now again the whole country does not mean, yeah, and I think we all agree does not mean kill all the people in there. And because we kind of like, not even kinda, we like the Iranian people. By the way if you've ever spent any time with Iranian people in America they are unusually warm, awesome people. The average Iranian who lives in this country, whether first or second generation, are really great people. So I'm pretty sure anybody who's had any contact with an Iranian in this country has by and large a pretty positive opinion. So we certainly don't dislike the people of Iran but we have some problems with their government and the president's very clear about that difference. And Israel's very clear about that difference which I believe is legitimate by the way. I think the Israeli people don't have a beef with Iranian people. I just don't think that's much of a thing. It's really a government-to-government problem and it's good to keep it that way.

Of course the headlines are all about the Game of Thrones finale last night. I would like to show you in a one-act play my reaction to the finale of Game of Thrones. Yes, I slept through these parts of the finale. What I took away from the finale was people died and it was over. But I don't want to talk about Game of Thrones because that's not interesting from this Periscope. What I'm going to talk about is their Game of Thrones. The finale is about a third of all the news today. Something like a third of all the real estate and the time spent, I'm talking about news, is about a TV show. Can you have a better administration than the Trump administration then to make one third of the news about a TV show? Do you have any idea how much that signifies the golden age?

Let me tell you what the golden age looks like. I remember the golden age. I define it as a time when most of your problems are solved or on the way to being solved. Alright so here are the headlines from the golden age. There's stuff about Ford cutting workers. Now that would be negative, right? There's a very big company. They're cutting workers. Except that the context is the strongest economy the United States has ever had. So really it's one company having some trouble which is news. It's definitely news. It's not good news but it's not about the economy. It's about one company. So that's probably a quarter of the page.

Another big piece of this is CNN's homepage. So I'm looking at how much real estate is devoted to each kind of topic. Then there's a whole bunch of stuff about how this Justin Amash is talking about impeachment. There isn't going to be any. That's a big story. It's about some person is against the president but it doesn't really matter because the Republicans have too much control in the Senate. It's a story without a story. It's a story about something that can't happen. Impeachment actually just can't happen.

Alright here's some more. There's a big piece about Buttigieg and his appearance on Fox News. Who cares? There was a candidate who had a town hall on Fox News which probably ended his chances of winning because he appeared on Fox News. It probably didn't work out to his favor. Then there's a bunch of stuff about weather and blah blah blah. Nothing, nothing. And then Game of Thrones. That's it.

Think about that for a moment, will you? There isn't really any bad news. How do you have a whole page of CNN and the worst they can come up with is people didn't like the Game of Thrones ending? That's really amazing, isn't it?

Once more good news. Here it comes. AOC recently said that she's open to the conversation about nuclear energy as part of the Green New Deal. It gets better. And then she adds, especially the newer technologies. Boom goes the dynamite. Do you feel it? That was the far left and the far right. Boop. It's the biggest news in the world. It's not on the CNN homepage because it's sort of not the news that they like to specialize on. It's also not on the Fox News page because Fox News doesn't like to give too much positive attention to AOC. They're far more likely to do a story about her and if it's negative. But it's also not in CNN. CNN would like to do positive stories about AOC. Their audience would love that. But AOC is being smart about nuclear energy. Say what you will about anything else, her views on the economy etc.

I'm not talking about anything else she's done that you don't like. She does represent a big point of view and an influential point of view even if it's not big on the right. And she has said unambiguously she's open to the conversation on nuclear, especially the newer technology. So in other words she now understands there is a difference. This is the biggest news in the world, completely ignored. Why? Because nuclear energy is probably the biggest part of what's gonna drive the world's economy in the next 30, 40 years. It's probably one of the biggest factors. And she just endorsed it. Now I'm pretty sure she knows enough about the topic that when she says I'm open to the conversation it means she's already agreed that the risk/reward makes sense. That's sort of how I interpret it. That she knows the risk versus the reward of nuclear when you look at it in the context of climate change being in her opinion an extinction event potentially. Then suddenly she has essentially endorsed the path that most people on the right would say makes sense.

As long as she's saying do everything fast, do more wind, do more solar, develop new technologies as fast as possible, maybe look at ways to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and also look hard at nuclear, newer technologies. That is the thinking style, the point of view, the way to frame our risk for climate change in the most completely productive way. Because whether you believe climate change is the big risk or a small risk or no risk at all you still want as much green energy and low-cost energy, which is what nuclear gives you, as you can get. So this is like one of the most positive developments in the world.

Now can all of you take a little more patting on the back? I'd like to prime you. You know how this works. One hand back here. Get ready to pat yourself on the back because there will be a moment in which this makes perfect sense. Prepare yourself to give yourself a self-pat on the back. Here it comes. You and this Periscope have watched me, and especially with the help of Mark Schneider who's been the primary advocate about the newer nuclear technologies. You've seen us talk all the time. Many of you have helped to boost that message. You've helped me boost it on Twitter. You boosted on Periscope. Do you think that our collective boosting of that message about the newer technologies of nuclear stuff, do you think that that message got through to AOC? We don't know. Well what do you think? Yeah I'm gonna watch your messages for a while because I'm not gonna pat myself on the back until I have agreement. Do you think that message got through? Probably. I'm seeing yeses. Alright that's enough. Yeses. We can't confirm this but here's what we do know. And ready. We do know we did the right thing. We boosted the right message and the right people received the message. I'm sure other people got to them. I'm sure that we're not the only force but we were one of them. Get ready. Pat yourself on the back. Good job. Good job.

Now and I'm gonna say this again. There is no way for us to know if anything that we did collectively or individually made a difference. We don't know that. But it sure looks like it did. And at the very least we were part of a collective group that were sending a similar message. So at the very least we were part of boosting the message. So look at this model. And I've said this before that social media to a large extent is the government because you saw that the government was out of tune. I think that's actually a really good way to put it. I'm gonna go with this analogy. It seemed like the government was out of tune. Meaning that they didn't even seem to have a disagreement. There wasn't really a disagreement on nuclear. It was more like one side was ignoring it or maybe wasn't quite up to date. Don't know exactly what was going on but it was attitude. There was an obvious solution or at least a path forward for this Green New Deal and for climate risk and the government seemed to be missing the obvious. They were just one step off. They were so close to being on the right path but it just some wiggle in the system. And I feel as though social media allowed the public to fine-tune the government and to get them at least saying, "Oh yeah that does need to be part of the conversation." So AOC, you said it now needs to be part of the conversation. And of course people on the right have already been there. And then you've got people who are respected the most such as Bill Gates. The reason I respect him the most is because it's obvious that his intentions are all in the positive direction. He does the work. He's brilliant and he's not political. He does not align with any side. Alright so Bill Gates is still probably my number one role model in the world. So that's all good news.

Let's talk about this. This seems like this should be the biggest story in the world but isn't. I say that a lot but let me develop this point a little bit. So we know now that apparently Comey wrote in an email that included his upper echelon staff. Dude that apparently according to Comey in an email, so this was back in the beginnings of the investigation about Russia collusion. So Comey had an email that Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the Intel assessment. To which I say to myself how do you interpret that? Brennan would know. It seems to me, you know, can't read his mind but common sense tells you that he would have known that the sources of the Intel were Russian. Russian spooks. Brennan had to know that the source of the Intel was Russian Intel people. And then he wanted it to be included in our system which would have changed the result or had a high chance of changing the result of the U.S. election. Think about that.

What is being reported is that Brennan was aware that Russian Intel people had created a questionable document that almost certainly was false information because they came from sources that would give you false information. And that it was by its nature would affect the election. Now we see people on the right say, "Hey doesn't that prove that Brennan was the one who was doing the Russian collusion?" To which I say that makes a hundred percent sense. Brennan knew what he was doing. He knew where the sources were. He knew how reliable they were which was not. He knew that it was disinformation or he had to know because he was smart enough to know that from high Russian sources who wanted to change the result of the election. And Brennan wanted to change the result in the election the same way the Russians did apparently by some kind of. But no let me modify that statement. I don't know that the Russians wanted to change it the same way Brennan wanted to change it. We know that the Russians wanted to interfere and all that looked like interference. So but why is it that the entire news cycle is not "Russia collusion is real and it turns out it was Brennan" who, as far as we can tell until you know it's not confirmed you need investigations but as far as we can tell the paper trail says that Brennan and Comey were involved with Russian interference. In other words that they colluded with Russia. How is that not objectively obviously true? How is it not completely obviously objectively true that Brennan and Comey have a paper trail saying that they indeed colluded with Russia? Meaning colluded with the Steele dossier that came from Russian sources which they knew to change this, to interfere with the election. How is that not completely a hundred percent a true statement?

Now again you know you need investigations to make sure that emails meant what you thought and people were doing what we imagine. But here's my theory. It's cognitive blindness. Meaning that we can logically see the connection that I just drew but we can't quite wrap our heads around the fact that we have the story opposite for two years plus. Because the whole story had been framed so vigorously as the Trump organization was colluding with Russia and now we know it was literally the opposite. The Trump organization was being framed by people colluding with Russia. Now again it could turn out that that interpretation that I just gave you is overstated. That could be the case. But the evidence that we have very strongly suggests that was the case and there doesn't seem to be a counter narrative to that. In other words there's nobody arguing the other side. There's just the evidence that very clearly says that and that's it. That's all we know.

So I think that the human brain can't make that much of a 180. It's hard to go from two and a half years of thinking the Trumps were involved with Russia collusion. We can get ourselves or some of us can to a new truth that that didn't happen. But if you noticed that half of the country can't even get there. Half of the country is still stuck in the last movie where they believe that the Mueller report actually shows collusion. They're actually reading the same page and they can't even see the words the way they were intended apparently because they see a completely different story on the same page. And it's a page written by lawyers to be as clear as possible. And as clear as possible as we could not we could not determine any collusion or conspiracy. So I think that what we're seeing is a weird cognitive blindness that we see in a lot of different situations where it's just too hard for people to get their heads into that new frame because it's so different from what it had been two years ago. And it's not because the facts don't clearly and unambiguously suggest that's what we should be talking about. Because the facts do clearly and unambiguously state that Brennan was colluding with Russia to change the result of a U.S. election. I just don't see any other way those facts could be interpreted. But again that's just the facts of evidence. You always have to wait, give people their day in court. Brennan like anybody else is innocent until proven guilty. I don't want to suggest otherwise. But if you're in the news business you have to prove, you have to, you should be talking about the news that is in evidence. And the news in evidence does not look good for Brennan. Why is that not on the front page? Why is the front page of CNN not "Well it looks like there's very strong evidence that the head of the CIA was trying to change the results of the election and we've got a paper trail that proves it and all evidence points that way perfectly"? How's that not the front page of CNN? There's something definitely broken in the system.

Alright let's talk about executives at Deutsche Bank. So here's the headline. I think this was a CNN headline. Executives at Deutsche Bank rejected the advice of their specialists when some transactions by the Trump organization that got flagged. Alright so there's a bank, Deutsche Bank, and they have specialists who look for transactions that are questionable. These specialists it is reported flagged transactions from the Trump organization and then upper management looked at the situation and decided to let it go. In other words they did not pursue any kind of legal or other recourse. Now is that a story? If you have never worked for a bank that looks like kind of a story doesn't it?

I have worked for a bank. I have many years as a banker working in a number of different areas within the bank. Pretty wide experience from lending to retail to the back systems etc. So I have a pretty broad experience in banking. Let me interpret this story from the ridiculous version that you're getting to what it really means. Alright I'm gonna do the bank translation. Here's what this means. When you hear that specialists flagged something do you hear "Oh my God the top experts in banking had an opinion but the bosses overrode it"? Is that what you're hearing? Because you shouldn't be hearing it that way. When you hear that a specialist flagged something that just means there was a big transaction and maybe it had a lot to do with cash. That's it. The reason that a specialist would flag a transaction is just because it's a big dollar amount and maybe cash is involved. That's it. That's the whole story.

Do you know how often there's a big transaction with cash involved? All the time. All the freaking time. And those specialists probably flag all of them. Do you know the banks, you know if you do any transaction over $10,000 and maybe the dollar amounts changed since I was a banker but in the old days anything over $10,000 got flagged. Do you know how many times I as a banker flagged a transaction? I personally as a bank teller flagged a lot of transactions because there was something about them that I needed a supervisor to look at. Something about it. There was an ask beyond my responsibility. Maybe it was just a big dollar amount. Maybe it was a complicated transaction. I wanted to make sure it got done right. Maybe there was something about it that was non-standard. It got flagged. It means nothing that specialists flagged the transaction. And when you see that their superiors looked at it and decided it wasn't worth pursuing what you have described is every day at a bank. That's every day at the bank. Every day underlings bring things to their boss and they say here's some things that are non-standard. What do you think? And the boss says okay okay okay okay okay. Pretty much all of the things that get flagged as non-standard eventually get approved.

What is missing in this CNN story? What is missing is how often this happens and what percentage of things that get flagged end up being illegal. What is your guess? If you hear a story with no context, "Specialist flagged some transactions in the bank," what does your brain go to? Well your brain automatically thinks incorrectly that this must be an unusual bothersome kind of thing in which you know you really have to worry about it. They leave out the context. The context is how often do things get flagged in the bank and then they just get approved because that's just the process. That's the normal banking process. The normal banking process is people flagging stuff all the time and then bosses saying that's okay. I'm glad you flagged it but I see no problem. Ordinary ordinary business reported as extraordinary. Alright now that's fake news isn't it? Would you say if something that's completely ordinary is reported the opposite as if it's extraordinary isn't that fake news? In what way could that not be fake news?

Because imagine how this could have been reported also accurately. Deutsche Bank is a bank like normal banks. Okay normal. They have processes in which anything that's non-standard or a big dollar amount for example gets flagged by people who watch this stuff. They check it with their superiors and 99% of the time or whatever the percentage is there's nothing wrong with the transaction and the superiors approve it and it goes through. That is called banking. What I just described is banking. Flagging things, looking for exceptions, making sure all risks have been accounted for or making sure that the right people are brought into the decision. Banking. It's just banking. That was the story. That's the only thing we know. Now if it turns out that there are other facts that come out that's another story but the story we know is that banking happened. That's it. That's all we know. Alright a little too much on that.

There's a story up in The Atlantic I think I tweeted it around yesterday that apparently researchers tried to figure out if people are good at predicting and they tried to figure out if people who are experts in a topic are better at predicting what the future will be in that topic. Now what do you think they found out? Is it true that experts in a topic are better than average, better than just someone else at predicting what will happen? And the answer is nope they're not. No difference at all. So then they did another, they did more research and they found out that the people who were best at predicting had, wait for it, wait for it, good talent stacks. Now the article doesn't use my term for it but a talent stack, an idea I introduced in my book "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big," is the idea that if you have a little bit of knowledge on a bunch of different fields you're better at predicting. That's really my primary message in that book is that you have a better understanding of your world including being able to predict what happens if you have a broad set of experience.

So for example someone who knows just science would be handicapped compared to somebody who knows science but they also have a business background or they also have a philosophy background or they also have a history background or an artist background. So any kind of breadth of experience allows you to see around corners better than if you're in a silo and you're really good at one. How is this important? Well I'll tell you. So somebody asked me the name of the book again. My book that all this came from, the idea of talent stacks, is "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big." You don't need to remember the name of the book. Just remember my name and "how to fail." Alright it's a long title so if you look for my name and my books you'll find it. If you look for "how to fail" you'll find it. That's it.

Now here's the good news. The good news is that my upcoming book "Loserthink" is a deeper dive on what you should know about each field to make you better at understanding your world. In other words I'm gonna take you for a tour about what a historian would know, you know how an artist would look at things, how an economist would look at things. But I'm not going to teach you those disciplines. I'm just going to teach you the key things that people learn, the big-picture stuff so that you'll instantly, instantly after you read the book be able to see how the world looks through a variety of filters instead of just one. So if you want to see the world through more than one filter this gives you a preview of those other filters so you can see around objects. You can see the future a little better. And I was very happy to see that this research completely agrees with the notion that if you have wider experience you don't have to be an expert. You just have to know a few of the facts about you know how economists see the world. I give you an example. So here's just the smallest example. If you had never heard of the idea of sunk costs, economists all know what a sunk cost is. It means you've already spent a lot of money here but your next decision should not account for the fact that you spent a lot of money already. You should treat money that you've already spent as if it's gone and it's a new decision today whether to spend more money on that same thing. Now that's an economist's way of viewing the world which an artist might not think of. An artist might say man I've already put a million dollars into this I'd better put some more money into it to justify the million I already spent. That's how artists think. Economists say that million's gone. It's just gone. I have a new decision today about whether my new hundred thousand should go in or not but it has nothing to do with the money I've already spent. So that's a very tiny little adjustment in how they see the world. The economists versus the artists. So the "Loserthink" book will be a deeper dive into concepts like that. Things that are real easy to learn like sunk costs but if you haven't been exposed to them at least once you wouldn't know that that was something you needed to consider. Alright you're gonna like that book by the way. That'll be out around in November. You can pre-order it now.

Alright I love the fact that only a few members of Congress have read the Mueller report. What does that tell you about the world? Now I always tell you that you should check your filter on the world against your observation. So if you believe the world is a certain way but you observe things are not going the way your view of the world predicts well maybe then you should consider a new filter on the world. My filter on the world as you know is that people don't use facts to make decisions. Now in the specific context of say finance or if you're doing accounting or if you're doing a scientific experiment then facts matter of course. But in our normal life we're not doing science. You know I didn't do any science today. You probably didn't either. But we make lots of decisions in lots of irrational ways and the facts don't really influence us so much. The Mueller report shows that as clearly as anything could show you. We were all waiting for the Mueller report because we thought the facts would change how we feel about stuff. I never believed that to be the case. My filter on the world is that it didn't matter how many facts were in the Mueller report. Had it said that the president was totally guilty the Republicans would have said I don't see it. I'm reading the report. I don't see any guilt in there. Had the report said that he was completely exonerated you know that the Democrats would say I don't see an exoneration there. I'm reading the same report you are. Now as luck would have it Mueller was ambiguous enough that it was easy in this case to take whatever opinion you wanted. "Oh yeah he totally made the case for impeachment," says Justin Amash. Republicans say I'm looking at the same thing. I don't see any justification for impeachment in there. So if you expected that the Mueller report would have facts and that the facts would change people's opinion you were in a different movie than I was. In my movie there was never a chance that the facts would change anybody's opinion. Now you could imagine that there would be some kind of fact that would take it so far it would change your opinion. In other words like a real smoking gun or even more than a smoking gun, a videotape of a crime. You know you could imagine some extreme where the facts would actually change people's opinions but it wasn't likely that we were gonna see that. I mean we would have seen that coming ahead of time. It would have been leaked or something. So within the range of what this Mueller report was likely to be you should have predicted from the start that it wouldn't change any minds. If you were predicting it would change minds make a mental note that your filter on the world did not match reality. Make another note that my filter on reality, the facts don't change opinions, was correct. So much so that most of the politicians who deeply care about this biggest question in the world didn't even bother to read it. And the people who could see the unredacted versions largely didn't even bother going to look. Nobody really cared about the facts. So just keep a note that that point of view succeeded this time in predicting again.

Alright I think I have a question about social media so maybe you can. So this is a question not an opinion. I want you to fact-check me here. I need somebody who's got a little more knowledge about APIs and social media platforms than I do. Could somebody create an interface, a program, an application that could post your content to any of the different platforms? Now this part I know is true. So there are like you Hootsuite and other programs like that that let you schedule and then post your content to multiple platforms. But could somebody make a version of that in which you could also read content from only the platforms you wanted to read but collective from all the platforms and also post to all the platforms? And here's the best part because I think the answer is yes to all those things right but this is where you need to fact-check me. Could you create a higher level platform that simply interacts with all the social media platforms for the purpose of being able to create competition where none exists? Let me say more about that. What can Facebook do that Twitter cannot do? Not much right? I can post a picture on Twitter. I can post a picture on Facebook. Now there's a small difference meaning that my Twitter posts are open to the public whereas my Facebook posts I can make private and or public. Very small change. Twitter can do that right? Could you build an interface above all the social media programs that did whatever filtering you wanted to do? But here's the important part. Here's the important part. Could you, when one of the platforms starts discriminating, move your attention and traffic to the one that is discriminating less or not at all? So for example you see a number of competing platforms. I saw one today called Parler.com now I think they want to be sort of a competitor to Twitter for political posts and be unfiltered but of course they have a rough road because it's hard to get anybody to go to a new platform. But if you had a platform on both of the platforms you could just add that one in there and you wouldn't have to use any extra effort to post to there or to read there. And then over time you can sort of move your traffic where people are being less abusive.

Let me give you the example. Suppose you and all your friends had this new higher level application that was simply interacting with different social media platforms and Facebook deplatformed Candace Owens. That one's all right now. They had her on suspension for a week for reasons that when they looked at it even they decided were not sufficient so they reversed it. But you as a consumer if you see somebody getting deplatformed you could very easily just check the box that takes that platform and if your traffic for a while because you would still see everybody's tweets everybody's pictures but they would just be coming to you through a different platform because people would be using all the platforms just by being part of one app. So could you create competition where there is none by some kind of a higher app that would reward Twitter let's say for being more, and I think this is true, there's probably a difference with the platforms in terms of their openness to free speech. We saw for example that Twitter I think has been more cautious than Facebook at a few cases. And it would be easy for you to let's say incent Twitter by giving them more traffic and take traffic away from Facebook but people would still see all your posts and all your content because they could see it through other platforms. Now I don't know if any of this is legal or if the platforms would you know close you down so that you couldn't use their platform with this third party. I suspect that would be the problem. So the general idea and maybe the specific application is not a good one but the general idea is how can we as customers put market pressure on the platforms to stay within the bounds of good censorship and not bad censorship. When I say good censorship there is content I don't want to see on the platforms. I don't want to see ISIS propaganda. I don't want to see anti-semitic stuff. Alright so I don't mind that the platforms are editing but when they go too far you want the market to immediately respond in ways that influence their bottom line immediately.

Because let's say for example if Facebook, well I'll give you a concrete example. When Candace Owens got kicked off on Facebook for a little while mentally I said to myself I'm just not going to log on to Facebook for a week. So I personally boycotted Facebook but I didn't give up my account nor would I. I think that canceling your account is sort of you know punching yourself in the face because we sort of need the social media accounts to be part of society. But I could certainly say to myself I'll bet I could go a week without logging onto Facebook because all the posts will still be there you know yeah if I feel like it but I probably wouldn't look as many posts if I wait a week. I'm not gonna bother to go down the whole thing. I might look at the new ones. So I said to myself I will mentally boycott them. But wouldn't it have been good if I had a platform I could just click them off for a week and I can give them, how about this, shouldn't the public be able to give Facebook a one week suspension? That's the way to frame it. Finally okay I accidentally got to the right answer by feeling around. Right now social media platforms can give an individual a one week suspension but the public cannot give the social media platforms a one week suspension. But why not? How hard would it be for that to be a thing? Now I'm not saying that the conservatives should all cancel their accounts with Facebook if they see somebody get a suspension but you could certainly make your feeling known by simply giving them a one-week suspension of clicks. And if something like a quarter of all conservatives gave Facebook a one-week suspension they would actually see it in their bottom line. They would actually notice that their graph just plunged 10 percent for no reason or whatever. So just something to think about.

So here's the general thought is this. Whenever you have competition you get better results and the social media situation has evolved to a point where we don't have equality of competition. The customers don't have as much power as they should have. You know usually the customer is always right. Social media is the one place where that's just not true. Am I right? For most businesses the statement the customer is always right you know within balance of course is a fair statement and companies actually act as though that's the case. Oh whatever you want we'll make this right. We want to keep you as a customer for life etc. But the big social media platforms they don't really need you. They need most people but they don't need you apparently. And so there's nothing stopping them from just you know slapping off a customer even if that customer maybe was in the gray area. There's just no penalty for it. So I think to stop the slippery slope you need a little bit more customer control than we currently have. So maybe we'll see that.

And by the way my original statement about the deplatforming of conservatives was always that the slippery slope doesn't exist meaning that a counter force always always appears when it looks like a slippery slope is gonna happen. So you never really get the slippery slope because the counter force always appears. And the counter force is people saying okay you got rid of that person and I can see why you did it even though I would prefer for a speech like that wouldn't make sense. I don't like it but at least I understand why you say here's our standards this is outside of our standards. At least I get it. It's credible even if I prefer it didn't happen. But when you start throwing in a Candace Owens that's not credible. The conservatives who look at that saying whoa whoa what did she say they got her kicked off the platform. And then you say that's it you got kicked off the platform for that. And there was a big pushback. So the pushback does appear when things go too far. Now that exact level where things end up might not be where you want it but it's not going to go forever and I think you already saw the pushback.

I think the irony, here's the irony with the conservative being banned. The worst problem about being a Trump supporter in 2016 was that you were associated with the worst people who were on the same side. My biggest problem in 2016 is that I could so easily be lumped in with some of the worst things that people could say in the world who also happened to like the president for their own reasons not the same reasons as mine. And what happens when those people get deplatformed? My credibility goes up. So I'm having a hard time completely being against any banning of anybody when that banning is good for me. I hate to say it but because I'm lumped in with a class of people that I would not love to be lumped in with you know I would not identify with other people's comments. I just have my own comments but it's easy for part of the country to say yeah you're a Trump supporter you must be a neo-Nazi because those guys like Trump too. I would be pretty happy if all of those voices the neo-Nazis etc. should they violate anything I'd be happy if they go away. It makes me look better. So it's sort of a make a phone call go away. There we go. Alright so that's enough of that. That's all I got for now and I will talk to you.

Somebody said then who will defend you? I don't know what you mean. Am I happy with unequal banning? Yes I am happy with unequal banning. Let me complete that thought. Somebody said would I be happy if the conservatives got more banned than the people on the left? Yes. Do you know why? Because when the people on the left are allowed to be terrible they're ruining the brand of all the people on the left. The anti-Trumpers can self-immolate if the worst of them pollute the rest of the brand. If on the conservative side the people who are most extreme get banned then my brand, people who say good things about President Trump, improves. Now is that free speech? No it's not free speech. That is not free speech. It is speech within a prescribed zone which is you know not too extreme in any direction. So am I happy if I can live within the approved zone? Cuz I don't think I've ever said anything that would get me kicked off a platform and I also don't think I ever would. I don't see any situation where I personally would get deplatformed. I just don't see it. But if people who are making my brand look bad get deplatformed I say two things. Hey that's not free speech because it isn't but it's also a private company and they have rules and standards and they get to enforce those. On the other hand I say hey it makes me look a little better. I don't know. I'm not so sure that you should worry about the other side not giving us bans because every time that they're allowed to go forward with their awfulness it just makes their whole side look less credible. Alright that's all for now and I'll make a bet with you that if I ever get deplatformed I will deserve it. There's my prediction.

Alright so here's another case where you can use your filter on life to predict. My filter on life says that there is no slippery slope for these bans of conservatives. That there is no slippery slope because the counter force has already formed. There would have been a slippery slope if no counter force had formed but they always do. So my filter says that somebody like me will never get banned unless I really did something that was legitimately bannable. I don't think I would intentionally. So that's the prediction. If you think that I will someday get banned keep that prediction you had. Keep that prediction in your head and see if it happens.

Now today I went after, yesterday I went after the SPLC for the SPLC the Southern Poverty Law Center who is supposedly the entity which points out all the bad people on race so that they can be deplatformed etc. They actually repeated the Charlottesville fine people hoax in a tweet yesterday. So I reported them. I mean actually legitimately no joke this is not political theater. I legitimately reported them for spreading race hoaxes because that race hoax is unambiguously false. They should know it and even if it's an accident it's the same effect. They need to get educated and get rid of that type of speaking but that is absolutely racially divisive on a top level. You know there's no, I don't want you to see any politics in this. I'm not, it's not tit for tat. It's not those things. This is legitimately hate speech against Trump supporters who are mostly white and they did it. It was public. It's unambiguously racially offensive to me. I am racially offended by that tweet and it's all the things that they're supposed to exist to not do. They did publicly and unambiguously. So I reported them. Now here's the thing. Will I be deplatformed for that? I say no. I say there is no way that I would be deplatformed for calling out bad racially divisive stuff. No way. Because I'm right. I think you have to at least be wrong you know. Actually be right. This is enough to keep you from being deplatformed but you have to have a good intention. I think it's pretty obvious that my intention is to get rid of racially divisive, I never know if people say divisive or divisive. People say that differently and I'm never sure which is the right way. But it's racially damaging and I wanted to get rid of it. I think that that kind of stuff has no place in the public discussion because it's fake and it's bad for everybody. So we'll say I don't think that a person like me can get kicked off a platform because I have both good intentions and in this case you know I have the truth on my side. So you don't get kicked off for that. Anyway I will talk to you all later.

my mom Paula pom pom pom hey I'm back yes I know it's been a long time since we had coffee but we're gonna have some simultaneous sipping today and it's gonna be extra good because I know you've been holding back hey everybody come on in here grab a seat make sure you're where you can see get a good seat up in the front and it's about time for the simultaneous hip and all you need to participate in this sacred ceremony you know some kind of a cup or a mug or a glass it could be a Stein or a chalice maybe a thermos possibly a flask fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the simultaneous scent I'm sorry I left you yesterday caught me by surprise I was a travel day I thought I'd have time but I did not and so today will be twice as good that's right I'm taking all of the goodness you would have heard yesterday but I couldn't get to it I'm packing to get to today for twice as good a coffee with Scott Adams let us start so there's some politician named Republican guy named Justin Amash who has apparently broken ranks with the Republicans and he says I have read that Mulla report and it has all kinds of impeachable conduct it has impeachable conduct that's pretty vague isn't it if if your best argument sounds like this Scott he did impeachable things you're in pretty good shape let me tell you what sounds very bad scott murdered a guy scott murdered a guy named bob that sounds pretty bad if somebody says scott you murdered somebody I'm like whoa I'm in trouble I'm going jail that's a pretty specific allegation here's what I'm not worried about Scott may have if you look at the totality of evidence nothing individual that mattered too much no crimes yeah no crimes and there was no conspiracy or anything like that but if you look at the big picture if you if you sort of get far away like in the outer space and and there's a lot of it and you put a lot of things together that don't mean much from outer space it could give you the impression sort of a vague uneasy feeling that there might be something that I would call a conduct collectively speaking which in a philosophical and maybe generic sense could be somewhere in the general vicinity of something we should at least have a conversation about impeachment under those conditions how much do I worry not a lot not a lot now Amash is probably being kind of clever because he's getting all kinds of attention what was the thing that Justin Amash was most famous for before this he was most famous for nobody never nobody ever heard of it so justin amash is greatest claim to fame prior to selling out the Republicans was that nobody ever heard of him so I guess he's done better than that now we've heard of him that's not nothing so there's something I'm sort of tracking changing topic a little bit about Joe Biden I call it the sleepy Joe listen I'll give it a name let's say the sleepy Joe visibility metric yeah let's call that the sleepy Joe visibility metric it goes like this sleepy Joe Biden is the dominant frontrunner for the Democrats it's the biggest story in the country politically partly because everything else is going well look for the big stories about the economy in the front page of CNN oh there are none because the economy is going well look for the big story about the war we're in oh there isn't a big story because we're winding down wars everywhere look for the big story about how our Chinese trade talks are going to end the world oh well that doesn't seem to be happening because again the economy is doing well so we've got this weird world where there isn't much to talk about except the 2020 election it's still the biggest thing right so if the biggest competitor the only person who could change the equation and maybe you know I have a chance of beating the President Trump that would be a big big big big change in the world it's a big story do you see a lot of interviews with Joe Biden so far I've seen zero I mean I think he's had them I think he's he must have talked to the press in the last several weeks but it just kind of comes and goes it seems to me that the anti-trump press either has no confidence in Biden or is hoping that the less they talk about him the less he gaffes it seems to me that you know I don't know that this is any collusion but maybe collectively people have made the same same same idea the more we see of Joe Biden the more we like him fill in the end of this sentence the more the public sees of Joe Biden now fill in the blanks what do you think is the answer to that the more we see him the more will love it does that work okay let's try it again the more we see of Joe Biden the more smarter things he'll say I don't know it doesn't quite fit the more we see of Joe Biden the more we'll know he's young enough and vital enough to do the job maybe could be or how about this one let's try this one on the more we see of Joe Biden the more gaffes he'll make which one of those things sounds a little truer does which one feels right it certainly seems to me that this time in the prior presidential election we saw a wall-to-wall non-stop Trump didn't we Trump the candidate said the more the more I get on TV than the better and he did everything he could to be on TV and get all this free press and he got a lot of it Joe Biden is doing exactly the opposite Trump made a calculation that the more Trump you saw the more likely he would get it think about that Trump correctly correctly deduced and it's obviously he'd do this I'm not reading reading minds I think he actually said this there's a quart of his early off but Trump was about removing all the oxygen from the other candidates he was about just eliminating any attention on anything but Trump and that worked because apparently the more Trump you see and the more likely you wanted for your president not everybody of course half the country doesn't but for the people who voted for him the more they saw apparently the more they liked on average but Biden seems to be the opposite now keep watching this because it's too early it could be that Biden isn't doing anything interesting and later he will excuse me so maybe we'll see more of that now the president has done his North Korea trick with he's tweeted at Iran after moving military assets into the region based on some vaguely specified risk that Iran was doing something dangerous maybe to do with loading missiles on boats maybe more than that we don't know but but Trump tweeted and I was looking for the exact weight but stye handy somebody can help me with the words here he basically said that if Iran ever attacked the United States interests not the homeland necessarily but if they did something dangerous that Iran would essentially cease to exist now those are my words not the president's but he essentially said that a and I thought that is such the right thing to do and once again this is another one of those situations where future presidents are going to have to answer to the way Trump did business in his administration every future president is going to be compared to how this president handled stuff and the way he handled stuff tends to to have a pattern have you noticed it step one the the Trump step is oh my god he can't do that that's too provocative that's too dangerous the world will explode we should never do whatever it is the Trump says we should do step two as we do it anyway so for whatever reason he gets his way and we say my god my god I can't believe he's doing this this was everything we feared I can't believe it the world is gonna end the step three you say okay it did work out okay I admit I admit this didn't work out but there's a lot of things we don't like about this president unrelated to this and how many times have you seen this let's take North Korea oh my god my god you can't say fire and fury you can't you can't be treating a leader with nuclear weapons the way you're tweeting this will no okay you're doing it anyway I see you're doing it anyway but my god don't do this we all warned you and you're doing it it okay it did work out yes we admit this worked out exactly with the way you hope to what but man what Charlize Vil what about some other thing you see it with trade talks with China trade talks are bad trade you know trade wars are bad it's bad it's bad it's bad okay you're doing it anyway Lisi you're doing it anyway but man this is not gonna turn okay the economy is doing better than anybody hoped sure alright so this was it turns out looks like both the left and the right agree it was exactly the right time to get tough on trade with China okay but even though we were totally wrong about this and even though we were totally wrong about the way he had approached North Korea he's got other problems I'm sure there are other things he's doing wrong there must be other other unrelated things that he's just doing completely wrong let's talk about those for a while so same thing with Iran except I think there's a little less pushback this time here's what I liked about his Iran warning the thing the first thing I like about it is a rad warning is that it's on Twitter and it's public I love the fact that it's public because he's talking to the public of the United States and he's letting Iran see the reaction directly would no filter from the public and so they can look at his tweet that says if you if you mess with us we will end you meaning and the regime and in Iran not kill all the people that should be the proper the proper interpretation is that we would change their regime not that Iran would cease to exist as a country and so the Ayatollah can look at the comments to the tweet and I haven't looked at him but I imagine that the comments are largely supportive of the concept then if Iran goes too far we've got a pretty dangerous you know president and he's unpredictable and I'm pretty sure he would use the opening to read to redo the Middle East so the last thing that Iran wants to give a president Trump is an excuse to redo the map of the Middle East what do they imagine that a president Trump would like to do we wouldn't mind redoing the map of the Middle East if the point of it was to make it a safer place for Israel for our other allies in the region so I think they're gonna look at his comments and say I do not see the citizens of the United States pushing back on this idea of eliminating Iran and if the citizens are not pushing back on it and I don't think we are in general obviously there's always people on both sides of everything but I don't think the public's pushing back on it so imagine you're over in Iran you're looking at the biggest military ever assembled in the history of the galaxy it's pointing all of its guns at you you've got the most unpredictable president who it should be sad wouldn't mind redoing the Middle East's if he had a reason you know if he had an excuse at the moment he has no excuse at the moment there's not a immediate need for him to you know remove the regime in Iraq not at the moment do they want to give him a moment do they want to create an excuse that would give this president with the biggest military ever created in the galaxy in the history of humanity do you want to give him an excuse to use some of those weapons you don't so what I love this was the clarity of it I think a normal president would have said something along the lines of Iran if you mess with us there will be a big response right big generic if you do something for us all all options are on the table now I do like it when our government says all options are on the table I like that as a I've always liked that as just a standard a good thing to say keeps all your options open makes them wonder but when Trump does it he goes way beyond all options are open he makes it binary if you screw with us we will end your whole country that's as clear as you can get now again and the whole country does not mean I yeah and I think we all agree does not mean kill all the people in there and because we kind of like not even kinda we like the Iranian people by the way if you've ever spent any time with Iranian people in America they are unusually warm awesome people the average Iranian who lives in this country whether first or second generation are really great people so I'm pretty sure anybody who's had any contact with an Iranian in this country has by and large a pretty positive opinion so we certainly don't dislike the people of Iran but we have some problems with their government and the president's very clear about that difference and Israel's very clear about that difference which I believe is legitimate by the way I think the lit the array the Israeli people don't have a beef with Iranian people I just don't think that's the mountain not much of a thing it's really government to government problem and it's good to keep it that way of course the headlines are all about the Game of Thrones finale last night I would like to show you in a one-act play my reaction to the finale of Game of Thrones yes I slept through these parts of the finale what I took away from the finale was and people died and it was over but I don't want to talk about Game of Thrones because that's not interesting from this periscope what I'm going to talk about is their Game of Thrones the finale is about a third of all the news today something like a third of all the the real estate and the time spent I'm talking about news is about a TV show can you have a better administration the Trump administration then to make one third of the news about a TV show do you have any idea how much that signifies the golden age let me tell you what the golden age looks like I remember the golden age i defined as a time when most of your problems are solved or on the way to being solved alright so here are the headlines from the golden age there's stuff about a ford cutting cutting workers now that would be negative right there's a very big company they're cutting workers except that the context is the strongest economy the United States has ever had so really it's one company having some trouble which is news it's definitely news it's not good news but it's not about the economy it's about one company so that it so that's probably a quarter of the page as that another another big piece of this is CNN's home page so I'm looking at how much real estate is devoted to each kind of topic then there's a whole bunch of stuff about how this Justin Amash is talking about impeachment there isn't going to happen that's a big story is about some person is against the president but it doesn't really matter because the Pietschmann can because the republicans have too much control in the Senate it's a story without a story it's a story about something that can't happen impeachment actually just can't happen alright here's some more there's a big piece about Buddha judge and his appearance on Fox News who cares there was a candidate who had a town hall on Fox News which probably ended his chances of winning because he appeared on Fox News it probably didn't work out to his favor then there's a bunch of stuff about weather and blah blah blah nothing nothing and then Game of Thrones that's it think about that for a moment will you there isn't really any bad news how do you have a whole page of of CNN and the worst they can come up with is people didn't like the Game of Thrones ending that's really amazing isn't it once more good news here it comes AOC recently said that she's open to the conversation about nuclear energy as part of the green New Deal it gets better and then she adds especially the newer technologies boom goes the dynamite do you feel it that was the far left and the far right boop it's the biggest news in the world it's not on the CNN homepage because it's sort of not the news that they like to specialize on it's also not on the fox news page because fox news doesn't like to give you know too much positive attention to a or C they're far more likely to do a story about her and if it's negative but it's also not in CNN CNN would like to do a positive stories about AMC their look their audience would love that but AOC is being smart about nuclear energy say what you will about anything else her views on the economy etc.

I'm not talking about anything else she's done that you don't like she does represent a big point of view and an influential point of view even if it's not big on the right and she has said on ambiguously open to the conversation of nuclear especially the newer technology so in other words she now understands there is a difference this is the this is the biggest news in the world completely ignored why because nuclear energy is is probably the biggest part of what's gonna drive drive the world's economy in the next 3040 years is probably one of the biggest factors and she just endorsed the Commerce now I'm pretty sure she knows enough about the topic that when she says I'm open to the conversation it means she's already agreed that the risk/reward makes sense that's sort of how I interpret it that she knows the risk versus the reward of nuclear when you when you look at it in the context of climate change being in her opinion a in a an extinction event potentially then then suddenly she has essentially endorsed the path that most people on the right would say makes sense as long as she's saying do everything fast do more wind do more solar develop you know new technologies as fast as possible maybe look at ways to take co2 out of the atmosphere and also look hard at nuclear newer technologies that is the the thinking style the point of view the the way to frame our our a risk for climate change in the most completely productive way because whether you believe climate change is the big risk or a small risk or no risk at all you still want as much green energy and a low-cost energy which is what nuclear gives you as you can get so this is like one of the most positive developments in the world now can all of you take a little more padding on the back I like I'd like to prime you you know how this works one hand back here get ready to pat yourself on the back because there will be a moment in which this makes perfect sense prepare yourself to give yourself a self pat on the back here it comes you you and this periscope have watched me and especially with the help of Mark Snyder who's been the primary advocate about the newer nuclear technologies you seen you seen us talk all the time many of you have helped to boost that message you've helped you've helped me boost it on Twitter you boosted on periscope do you think that are collected boosting of that message about the newer technologies of nuclear stuff do you think that that message got through to AOC we don't know well what do you think yeah I'm gonna watch your messages for a while because I'm not gonna Pat myself on the back until I have agreement do you think that message got through probably I'm seeing yeses all right that's enough fat yeses we can't confirm this but here's what we do know and ready and ready we do know we did the right thing we boosted the right message and the right people receive do have the message I'm sure other people got to them I'm sure that we're not the only force but we were one of them get ready pat yourself on the back good job good job now and I'm gonna say this again there is no way for us to know if anything that we did collectively or individually made a difference we don't know that but it sure looks like you did in at the very least we were part of a collective group that were sending a similar message so at the very least we were part of boosting the message so look at this model and I've said this before that social media to a large extent is the government because you saw that the government was out of tune I think that's actually a really good way to put it I'm gonna I'm gonna go with this analogy it seemed like the government was out of tune meaning that they didn't even seem to have a disagreement there wasn't really a disagreement on nuclear it was more like one side was ignoring it or maybe wasn't quite up to date don't know exactly what was going on but it was attitude there was an obvious solution or at least a path forward for this green New Deal and for climate risk and the government seemed to be missing the obvious they were just they were like one step off they were they were so close to being on the right path but it just some wiggle and in the system and I feel as though social media allowed the public to fine-tune the government and to get them at least saying oh yeah that does need to be part of the conversation so a or C you said it now needs to be part of the conversation and of course people on the right have already been there and then you've got people who who are respect the most such as Bill Gates the reason I respect them the most is because it's obvious that his intentions are all in the positive direction he does the work he's brilliant and he's not political he does not aligned with any side all right so Bill Gates is still mine probably my number one role model in the world Sam so that's all good news let's talk about this this seems like this should be the biggest story in the world but isn't I say that a lot but but let me develop this this point a little bit so we know now that apparently Comey wrote in an email that included his upper echelon staff dude that apparently according to Comey in an email so this was back in the beginnings of the investigation about rush occlusion so copies had an email that Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the Intel assessment to which I say to myself how do you interpret that Brennan would know it seems to me you know can't read his mind but common sense tells you that he would have known that the sources of the Intel were Russian Russian spooks Brennan had to know that the source of the Intel was Russian you know Intel people and then he he wanted it to be included in our system which would have changed the result or had a high chance of changing the result of the u.s.

election think about that what is being reported is a Brennan was aware that Russian Intel people had created a questionable document that almost certainly was false information because they came from sources that would give you false information and that it was by its nature would affect the election now we see people on the right say hey doesn't that prove that Brennan was the one who was doing the Russian a collusion to which I say that makes a hundred percent sentence Brennan knew what he was doing he knew where the sources were he knew he knew how reliable they were which was not he knew that it was disinformation or he had to know because he was smart enough to know that from high Russian sources who wanted to change the result of the election and Brennan wanted to change the result in the election the same way the Russians did apparently by some kind of so but no let me let me modify that statement I don't know that the Russians wanted to change it the same way Brennan wanted to change it we know that the Russians wanted to interfere and all that looked like interference so but why is it that the entire news cycle is not a Russia collusion is real and it turns out it was bred and who who as far as we can tell until you know it's not confirmed you need investigations but as far as we can tell the paper trail says that Brennan and Comey were involved with Russian interference in other words that they colluded with Russia how is that not objectively obviously true how is it not completely obviously objectively true that Brennan and Comey have a paper trail saying that they indeed colluded with Russia meaning colluded with the steel dossier that came from Russian sources which they knew to change this to interfere with the election how is that not completely a hundred percent a true statement now again you know you need investigations to make sure that emails meant what you thought and people were doing what well we imagine but here's here's my theory it's cognitive blindness meaning that we can logically see the connection that I just drew but we can't quite wrap our heads around the fact that we have the story opposite for two years plus because the whole story had been framed so vigorously as the Trump Organization was colluding with Russia and now we know it was literally the opposite the Trump Organization was being framed by people colluding with Russia now again it could could turn out that that interpretation that I just gave you is overstated that could be the case but the evidence in that we have very strongly suggests that was the case and there doesn't seem to be a counter narrative to that in other words there's nobody arguing the other side there's just the evidence that very clearly says that and that's it that's all we know so I think that the human brain can't make that much of a rant a 180 it's hard to go from two and a half years of thinking the Trump's were involved with Russia collusion we can get ourselves or some of us can to a new truth that that didn't happen but if you noticed that half of the country can't even get there half of the country is still stuck in the the last movie where they believe that the mullah report actually shows collusion there they're actually reading the same page and they can't even see the words the way they were intended apparently because they see a completely different story on the same page and it's a page written by lawyers to be as clear as possible and as clear as possible as we could not we could not determine any collusion or conspiracy so I think that what we're seeing is a weird cognitive blindness that we see in a lot of different situations where where it's just too hard for people to get their heads into that new frame because it's so different from what it had been two years ago and it's not because the facts don't clearly and unambiguously suggest that's what we should be talking about because the facts do clearly and unambiguously state that Brennan was colluding with Russia to change the result of a u.s.

election I just don't see any other way those facts could be interpreted but again that's just the facts of evidence you always have to wait give people their day in court Brennan like anybody else is innocent until proven guilty I don't want to suggest otherwise but if you're in the news business you have to prove you have to you should be talking about the news that is in evidence and the news and evidence does not look good for Brennan why is that not on the front page why is the front page of CNN not well it looks like there's very strong evidence that the head of the CIA was trying to change the results of the election and we've got a paper trail that proves it and all evidence points that way perfectly what how's that not the front page of seeing it there's something definitely broken in the system all right let's talk about executives that deutschebank so here's the headline I think this was CNN Headline executives that deutsche bank rejected the advice of their specialists when some transactions by the Trump Organization that got flagged all right so there's a bank Deutsche Bank and they have specialists who look for transactions that are questionable these specialists it is reported flagged transactions from the Trump Organization and then upper management looked at the the situation and decided to let it go in other words they did not pursue any kind of legal or other recourse now is that a story if you have never worked for a bank that looks like kind of a story doesn't it I have worked for a bank I have many years as a banker working in the number of different areas within the bank pretty pretty wide wide experience from lending to retail to the back systems etc so I have a pretty broad experience in banking let me interpret this story from the ridiculous version that you're getting to what it really means all right I'm gonna do the bank translation here's what this means when you hear that specialists flagged something do you hear oh my god the top experts in banking had an opinion but the bosses overrode it is that what you're here because you shouldn't be hearing it that way when you hear that a specialist flagged something that just means there was a big transaction and maybe you had a lot to do with cash that's it the reason that a specialist would flagged a transaction is just because it's a big dollar amount and maybe cash is involved that's it that's the whole story do you know how often there's a big transaction with cash in vault all the time all the freaking time and those specialists probably flag all of them do you know the banks you know if you if you do any transaction over $10,000 and maybe the dollar amounts changed since I was a banker but in the old days anything over $10,000 got flagged do you know how many times I as a banker flagged a transaction I personally as a bank teller flagged a lot of transactions because there were something about them that I needed a supervisor to look at something about it there was an as the bounds of my responsibility maybe it was just a big dollar amount maybe it was a complicated transaction I wanted to make sure it got done right maybe there was something about it there was non-standard it got flagged it means nothing that specialists flagged the transaction and when you see that their superiors looked at it and decided it wasn't worth pursuing what you have described is every day a bank that's every day at the bank every day underlings bring things to their boss and they say here's some things that are non-standard what do you think and the boss says ok ok ok ok ok Boop pretty much all of the things that get flagged as non-standard eventually get improved what is missing in this CNN story what is missing is how often this happens and what percentage of things that give flagged end up being illegal what is your guess if you hear a story with no context specialist flagged some transactions in the bank what is your brain go to well your brain automatically thinks incorrectly that this must be an unusual bothersome kind of thing in which you know you really have to worry about it they leave out the context the context is how often do things get flagged in the bank and then they just can prove because that's just the process that's the normal banking process the normal banking process is people flagging stuff all the time and then bosses saying that's ok I'm glad you flagged it but I see no problem ordinary ordinary business reported as extraordinary all right now that's fake news isn't it would you say if something that's completely ordinary is reported the opposite as if it's extraordinary isn't that fake news in what way could that not be fake news because imagine how this couldn't have been reported also accurately Deutsche Bank is a bank like normal banks okay normal they have processes in which anything that's non-standard or a big dollar amount for example gets flagged by people who watch this stuff they check it with their superiors and 99% of the time or whatever the percentage is there's nothing wrong with the transaction and the superiors to prove it and it goes through that is called banking what I just described is banking flagging things looking for exceptions making sure all risks have been accounted for or making sure that the right people are brought into the decision banking it's just banking that was the story that's the only thing we know now if it turns out that there are other facts that come out that's another story but the story we know is that banking happened that's it that's all we know all right a little too much on that is or else we got there's a story up in the Atlantic I think I tweeted it around yesterday then apparently researchers tried to figure out if people are good at predicting and they tried to figure out if people who are experts in a topic are better at predicting what the future will be in that topic now what do you think they found out is it true that experts in a topic are better than average better than just someone else at predicting what will happen and the answer is nope they're not no difference at all so then they did another they did more research and they found out that the people who were best at predicting had wait for it wait for it good talent stacks now the article doesn't use my term for it but a talent stack an idea I introduced in my book had a failed almost everything and still win big is the idea that if you have a little bit of knowledge on a bunch of different fields you you're better at predicting that's really my primary message in that book is that you you have a better understanding of your world including being able to predict what happens if you have a broad broad set of experience so for example someone who knows just science would be handicapped compared to somebody who knows science but they also have a business background or they also have a philosophy background or they also have a history background or an artist background so any any kind of breadth of experience allows you to see around corners better than if you're in a silo and you're really good at one how is this important well I'll tell you so somebody asked me the name of the book again my my book that all this came from the idea of talent stacks is how to fail at almost everything and still win big you don't need to remember the name of the book just remember my name and how to fail all right it's a long title so if you look for my name and my books you'll find it if you look for how to fail you'll find it that's it now here's the good news the good news is that my upcoming book loser think is a deeper dive on what you should know about each field to make you better at understanding your world in other words I'm gonna take you for a tour about what a historian would know you know how an artist would look at things how how an economist would look at things but I'm not going to teach you those disciplines I'm just going to teach you the key things that people learn the the big-picture stuff so that you'll instantly instantly after you read the book be able to see how the world looks through a variety of filters instead of just one so if you want to see the world through more than one filter this gives you a preview of those other filters so you can you can see around objects you can see the future a little better and I was very happy to see that this research completely completely agrees with the notion that if you have wider experience you don't have to be an expert you just have to know a few of the facts about you know how economists see in the world I give you an example so here's just the smallest example if you had never heard of the the idea of sunk costs economists all know what a sunk costs are it means you've already spent a lot of money here but your next decision should not account for the fact that you spent a lot of money already you should treat money that you've already spent as if it's gone and it's a new decision today whether to spend more money on that same thing now that's an economists way of viewing the world which an artist might not think of an artist might say man I've already put a million dollars into this I'd better put some more money into it to justify the million I already spent that's how artists think economists say that millions gone it's just gone I have a new decision today about whether my new hundred thousand should go in or not but it has nothing to do with the money I've already spent so that's a very tiny little adjustment in how these to see the world the economists versus the artists so the loser thing book will be a deeper dive into concepts like that things that are real easy to learn like some costs but if you haven't been exposed to them at least once you wouldn't know that that was something you needed to consider all right you're gonna like that book by the way that'll be out around in November you can pre-order it now all right I love the fact that only a few members of Congress have read the Muller report what does that tell you about the world now I always tell you that you should check your filter on the world against your observation so if you believe the world is a certain way but you observe things are not going the way your view of the world predicts well maybe then you should consider a new filter on the world my filter on the world as you know is that people don't use facts to make decisions now in the in the specific context of say finance you if you're doing accounting or if you're doing a scientific experiment than facts matter of course but our normal life we're not doing science you know I didn't do any science today you probably didn't either we but we make lots of decisions in lots of irrational ways and the facts don't really influence us so much the Muller report shows that as clearly as anything could show you we were all waiting for the Muller report because we thought the facts would change how we feel about stuff I never believed that to be the case my filter around the world is that it didn't matter how many facts were in the molar report had it said that the president was totally guilty the Republicans would have said I don't see it I'm reading I see the report I don't see any guilt in there had the report said that he was completely exonerated you know that the Democrats would say I don't see in the exoneration there I'm reading the same reporter you are now as luck would have it Muller was ambiguous enough that it was easy in this case to to take whatever opinion you wanted oh yeah he totally made the case for impeachment says Justin Amash Republicans say I'm looking at the same thing I don't see any justification for impeachment in there so if you expected that the Mullen report would have facts and that the facts would change people's opinion you were in a different movie than I was in my movie there was never a chance that the facts would change anybody's opinion now you could imagine that there would be some kind of fact that would take in so far it would change your opinion in other words like a real smoking gun or even more than a smoking of a videotape of a crime you know you could imagine is you could imagine some extreme where the facts would actually change people's opinions but it wasn't likely that we were gonna see that I mean we would have seen that coming ahead of time it would have been leaked or something so within the range of what this molar report was likely to be you you should have predicted the start that it wouldn't change any minds if you are predicting it would change minds make a mental note that your filter on the world did not mean reality make another note then my filter on the route unreality the facts don't change opinions was correct so much so that most of the politicians who deeply care about this biggest question in the world didn't even bother to read it and the people who could see the unredacted versions largely didn't even bother going a look nobody really cared about the facts so just keep a note that at that point of view succeeded this time in predicting again all right I think I have a question about social media so maybe you can so this is a question not an opinion I want you to fact-check me here I need somebody who's who's got a little more knowledge about api's and social media platforms than I do could somebody create a an interface a program an application that could post your content to any of the different platforms now this part I know is true so there are like you Hoot.

Suite and and other programs that light that let you lay you schedule and then post your content to multiple platforms but could somebody make a version of that in which you could also read content from only the platforms you wanted to read but but collective from all the platforms and also post all the platforms and and here's the best part because I think the answer is yes to all those things right but this is where you need to fact-check me could you create a higher level platform that simply interacts with all the social media platforms for the purpose of being able to create competent where none exists let me say more about that what can Facebook do that Twitter cannot do not much right I can post a picture on Twitter I can post a picture on Facebook now there's a small difference meaning that my Twitter posts are open to the public whereas my Facebook posts I can make private and/or public very small change Twitter can do that right could you build an interface above all the social media programs that did whatever filtering you wanted to do but here's the important part here's the important part could you when one of the platform's starts discriminating move your attention in traffic to the one that is discriminating less or not at all so for example you see a number of competing platforms I saw one today called Politico calm now I think they want to be sort of a competitor to Twitter for political policies and be unfiltered but of course they have a rough road because it started to get anybody to go to a new platform but if you had a platform on both of the platforms you could just add that one in there and you wouldn't have to use any extra effort to post to there or to read there and then over time you can sort of move your traffic where people are being less abusive let me give you the example suppose suppose you and all your friends had this new higher level application that was simply interacting with different social media platforms and Facebook D platforms canvas that one's all right now they had her on suspension for a week for reasons that when they looked at it even they decided we're not sufficient so they reversed it but you as a consumer if you see somebody getting D platformed you could very easily just check the box that takes that platform and if your and if your traffic for a while because you would still see everybody's tweets everybody's pictures but they would just be coming to you through a different platform because people would be using all the platforms just by being part of one app so could you create competition where there is none by some kind of a higher app that would reward Twitter let's say for being more and I think this is true there's probably a difference with the platforms in terms of their openness to free speech we saw off for example the Twitter I think has been more cautious than Facebook at a few cases and it would be easy for you to let's say in sense Twitter by giving them more traffic and take traffic away from Facebook but people would still see all your posts and all your content because they could see it through other other platforms now I don't know if any of this is legal or if the platforms would you know close you down so that you couldn't use their platform with this third party I suspect that would be the problem so the the general idea and maybe the specific applications is not a good one but the general idea is how can we as customers put market pressure on the platforms to stay within the bounds of good censorship and not bad censorship when I say good censorship there is content I don't want to see on the platforms I don't want to see Isis propaganda I don't want to see anti-semitic stuff all right so I don't mind that the platforms are or are editing but when they go too far you want the market to immediately respond in ways that influence their bottom line immediately because let's say for example if Facebook well I'll give you I'll give me a concrete example when Candace almonds got kicked off on Facebook for a little while mentally I said to myself I'm just not going to log on to Facebook for a week so I personally boycotted Facebook but but I didn't give up my account nor would I I think that canceling your account is sort of you know punching yourself in the face because we sort of need the social media accounts to be part of society but I could certainly say to myself I'll bet I could I could go a week without logging onto Facebook because all the all the posts will still be there you know yeah if I feel like it but I probably wouldn't look as many posts if I wait a week I'm not gonna bother to go down the whole thing I might look at the new one so I said to myself I will mentally boycott them but wouldn't it have been good if I had a platform I could just click them off for a week and I can give them how about this shouldn't shouldn't the public could be able to give Facebook a one week suspension that's the way to frame it finally okay I accidentally got to the right answer by feeling around right now social media platforms can give an individual a one week suspension but the public cannot give the social media platforms of what week suspension but why not how hard would it be for that to be a thing now I'm not saying that the conservatives should all cancel their accounts with Facebook if they see somebody get a suspension but you could certainly make your feeling known by simply giving them a one-week suspension of of clicks and if something like if something like a quarter of all conservatives gave Facebook a one-week suspension they would actually see it in their bottom line they would actually notice that their graph just wouldn't just plunged 10 percent for no reason or whatever so just something to think about so here's here's the the general thought is this whenever you have competition you get better results and the social media situation has evolved to a point where we don't have equality of competition the customers don't have as much power as they should have you know usually the customer is always right social media is the one place where that's just not true Am I am i right for most businesses the statement the customer is always right you know within within balance of course is a fair statement and companies actually act as though that's the case oh whatever you want we'll make this right will we want to keep you as a customer for life etc but the big social media platforms they don't really need you they need most people but they don't need you apparently and so there's there's nothing stopping them from just you know slapping off a customer even if that customer maybe was in the gray area there's just no penalty for it so I think to stop the slippery slope you need a little bit more customer control than we currently have so maybe we'll see that and by the way my my original statement about the D platforming of conservatives was always that the slippery slope doesn't exist meaning that a counter force always always appears when it looks like a slippery slope is gonna happen so you never really get the slippery slope because the character force always appears and the counter force is people saying ok you got rid of that person and I can see why you did it even though I would prefer for a speech like that wouldn't make sense I don't like it but at least I understand why you say here's our standards this is outside of our standards at least I get it it's credible even if I prefer it didn't happen but when you start throwing in a Candice Owens that's not credible the Conservatives who look at that saying whoa whoa what did she say they got her kicked off the platform and then you say that's it you got kicked off the platform front of that and there was a big push back so the push back does appear when things go too far now that exact level where things end up might not be where you want it but it's not going to go forever and I think I think you already saw the pushback I think the ironic here's the irony with the conservative being banned the the worst problem about being a trump supporter in 2016 was that you were associated with the worst people who were on the same side my biggest problem in 2016 is that I could so easily be lumped in with some of the worst things that people could say in the world who happened who also happens like the president for their own reasons not the same reasons as mine and what happens when those people get d-flat forms my credibility goes up so I'm having a hard time completely being against any banning of anybody when that banning is good for me I hate to say it but because I'm lumped in with a class of people that I would not love myself in with you know I would not identify with other people's comments I just have my own comments but it's easy for part of the country to say yeah you're a trump supporter you must be a neo-nazi because those guys like Trump too I would be pretty happy if all of those voices the neo-nazis etc should they should they violate anything I'd be happy if they go away it makes it makes me look better so it's sort of a make a phone call go away there we go alright so that's enough of that that's all I got for now and I will talk to you somebody said then who will defend you I don't know what you mean am I happy with unequal banning yes I am happy with unequal banning let me complete that thought somebody said would I be happy if if the Conservatives got more banned than the people on the left yes do you know why because when the people on the left are allowed to be terrible they're ruining the brand of all the people on the left that the anti-trump errs can self-immolate if the worst of them pollute the rest of the brand if on the conservative side the people who are most extreme get banned then my brand people who say good things about President Trump improves now is that free speech now it's not free speech that is not free speech it is speech within within a prescribed zone which is you know not too extreme in any direction so am I happy if I can live within the approved does that one cuz I don't think I've ever said anything that would get me kicked off a platform and I also don't think I ever would I don't see any situation where I personally would get deep platform I just don't see it but if people who are making my brand look bad look get deep platform I say two things hey that's not free speech because it isn't but it's also a private company and they have rules and standards and they get to enforce those at the other hand I say hey makes me look a little better I don't know I'm not so sure that you should worry about the other side not giving us banned because every time that they're allowed to go forward with their awfulness it just makes their whole side look less credible alright that's all for now and I'll make a bet with you that if I ever get D platformed I will deserve it there's there's my prediction alright so here's another case where you can use your filter on life to predict my filter on life says that that there is no slippery slope for these bands of conservatives that there is no slippery slope because the counter force has already formed there would have been a slippery slope if no counter force is formed but they always do so my filter says that that somebody like me will never get banned unless I really did something that was legitimately bana Mille I don't think I would intentionally so that's that's the prediction if you think that I will someday get banned keep that prediction you had keep that prediction in your head and see if it happens now today I went after yesterday I went after the SPLC for the the SPLC the Southern Poverty Law Center who is supposedly the entity which points out all the the bad people on race so that they can be deep platformed etc they actually repeated the Charlottesville fine people hopes in a tweet yesterday so I reported them I mean actually legitimately no joke this is not political theater I legitimately reported them for for spreading race hoaxes because that race hoax is is unambiguously false they should know it and even if it's an accident it's the same effect they need to get educated and get rid of that that type of speaking but that is absolutely racial racially divisive on a top level you know there's there's no I don't want you to see any politics in this I'm not I'm not it's not tit for tat it's not those things this is legitimately hate speech against Trump supporters who are mostly white and they did it it was public its unambiguously racially offensive to me I am racially offended by that tweet and it's it's all the things that they're supposed to exist to not do they did publicly and unambiguously so I reported them now here's the thing we'll IBD platformed for that I say no I say there is no way that I would be deep platformed for calling out bad racial divisive stuff no way because I'm right I think you have to at least be wrong you know I actually be right this is enough to keep you from being the platform but you have to have a good intention I think it's pretty obvious that my intention is to get rid of a racially divisive I never notice a divisive divisive divisive people say that differently and I'm never sure which is the right way but it's racially damaging and I wanted to get rid of it I think that that kind of stuff has no place in the public discussion because it's fake and it's bad for everybody so we'll say I don't think that a person like me can get kicked off a platform because I have both good intentions and in this case you know I have the truth on my side so you don't get kicked off for that anyway I will talk to you all later

my mom Paula pom pom pom hey I'm back

yes I know it's been a long time since

we had coffee but we're gonna have some

simultaneous sipping today and it's

gonna be extra good because I know

you've been holding back hey everybody

come on in here grab a seat make sure

you're where you can see get a good seat

up in the front and it's about time for

the simultaneous hip and all you need to

participate in this sacred ceremony you

know some kind of a cup or a mug or a

glass it could be a Stein or a chalice

maybe a thermos possibly a flask fill it

with your favorite liquid I like coffee

and join me now for the simultaneous

scent I'm sorry I left you yesterday

caught me by surprise I was a travel day

I thought I'd have time but I did not

and so today will be twice as good

that's right I'm taking all of the

goodness you would have heard yesterday

but I couldn't get to it I'm packing to

get to today for twice as good a coffee

with Scott Adams let us start so there's

some politician named Republican guy

named Justin Amash who has apparently

broken ranks with the Republicans and he

says I have read that Mulla report and

it has all kinds of impeachable conduct

it has impeachable conduct that's pretty

vague isn't it if if your best argument

sounds like this Scott he did

impeachable things you're in pretty good

shape let me tell you what sounds very

bad scott murdered a guy scott murdered

a guy named bob that sounds pretty bad

if somebody says scott you murdered

somebody I'm like whoa I'm in trouble

I'm going

jail that's a pretty specific allegation

here's what I'm not worried about Scott

may have if you look at the totality of

evidence nothing individual that

mattered too much no crimes

yeah no crimes and there was no

conspiracy or anything like that but if

you look at the big picture if you if

you sort of get far away like in the

outer space and and there's a lot of it

and you put a lot of things together

that don't mean much from outer space it

could give you the impression sort of a

vague uneasy feeling that there might be

something that I would call a conduct

collectively speaking which in a

philosophical and maybe generic sense

could be somewhere in the general

vicinity of something we should at least

have a conversation about impeachment

under those conditions

how much do I worry not a lot not a lot

now Amash is probably being kind of

clever because he's getting all kinds of

attention what was the thing that Justin

Amash was most famous for before this he

was most famous for nobody never nobody

ever heard of it so justin amash is

greatest claim to fame prior to selling

out the Republicans was that nobody ever

heard of him so I guess he's done better

than that now we've heard of him that's

not nothing so there's something I'm

sort of tracking changing topic a little

bit about Joe Biden I call it the sleepy

Joe

listen I'll give it a name let's say the

sleepy Joe visibility metric

yeah let's call that the sleepy Joe

visibility metric it goes like this

sleepy Joe Biden is the dominant

frontrunner for the Democrats it's the

biggest story in the country politically

partly because everything else is going

well look for the big stories about the

economy in the front page of CNN oh

there are none because the economy is

going well look for the big story about

the war we're in oh there isn't a big

story because we're winding down wars

everywhere look for the big story about

how our Chinese trade talks are going to

end the world oh well that doesn't seem

to be happening because again the

economy is doing well so we've got this

weird world where there isn't much to

talk about except the 2020 election it's

still the biggest thing right so if the

biggest competitor the only person who

could change the equation and maybe you

know I have a chance of beating the

President Trump that would be a big big

big big change in the world it's a big

story do you see a lot of interviews

with Joe Biden so far I've seen zero I

mean I think he's had them I think he's

he must have talked to the press in the

last several weeks but it just kind of

comes and goes it seems to me that the

anti-trump press either has no

confidence in Biden or is hoping that

the less they talk about him the less he

gaffes it seems to me that you know I

don't know that this is any collusion

but maybe collectively people have made

the same same same idea the more we see

of Joe Biden the more we like him fill

in the end of this sentence the more the

public sees of Joe Biden now fill in the

blanks what do you think is the answer

to that the more we see him

the more will love it does that work

okay let's try it again

the more we see of Joe Biden the more

smarter things he'll say I don't know it

doesn't quite fit the more we see of Joe

Biden the more we'll know he's young

enough and vital enough to do the job

maybe could be or how about this one

let's try this one on the more we see of

Joe Biden the more gaffes he'll make

which one of those things

sounds a little truer does which one

feels right it certainly seems to me

that this time in the prior presidential

election we saw a wall-to-wall non-stop

Trump didn't we

Trump the candidate said the more the

more I get on TV than the better and he

did everything he could to be on TV and

get all this free press and he got a lot

of it Joe Biden is doing exactly the

opposite Trump made a calculation that

the more Trump you saw the more likely

he would get it think about that

Trump correctly correctly deduced and

it's obviously he'd do this I'm not

reading reading minds I think he

actually said this there's a quart of

his early off but Trump was about

removing all the oxygen from the other

candidates he was about just eliminating

any attention on anything but Trump and

that worked because apparently the more

Trump you see and the more likely you

wanted for your president not everybody

of course half the country doesn't but

for the people who voted for him the

more they saw apparently the more they

liked on average but Biden seems to be

the opposite now keep watching this

because it's too early it could be that

Biden isn't doing anything interesting

and later he will excuse me so maybe

we'll see more of that now the president

has done his North Korea trick with

he's tweeted at Iran after moving

military assets into the region based on

some vaguely specified risk that Iran

was doing something dangerous maybe to

do with loading missiles on boats maybe

more than that we don't know but but

Trump tweeted and I was looking for the

exact weight but stye handy somebody can

help me with the words here he basically

said that if Iran ever attacked the

United States interests not the homeland

necessarily but if they did something

dangerous that Iran would essentially

cease to exist

now those are my words not the

president's but he essentially said that

a and I thought that is such the right

thing to do and once again this is

another one of those situations where

future presidents are going to have to

answer to the way Trump did business in

his administration every future

president is going to be compared to how

this president handled stuff and the way

he handled stuff tends to to have a

pattern have you noticed it

step one the the Trump step is oh my god

he can't do that that's too provocative

that's too dangerous the world will

explode we should never do whatever it

is the Trump says we should do step two

as we do it anyway so for whatever

reason he gets his way and we say my god

my god I can't believe he's doing this

this was everything we feared I can't

believe it the world is gonna end the

step three you say okay it did work out

okay I admit I admit this didn't work

out but there's a lot of things we don't

like about this president unrelated to

this and how many times have you seen

this let's take North Korea oh my god my

god you can't say fire and fury you

can't you can't be treating a leader

with nuclear weapons the way you're

tweeting this will no okay you're doing

it anyway I see you're doing it anyway

but my god don't do this we all warned

you and you're doing it it okay it did

work out yes we admit this worked out

exactly with the way you hope to what

but man what

Charlize Vil what about some other thing

you see it with trade talks with China

trade talks are bad trade you know trade

wars are bad it's bad it's bad it's bad

okay you're doing it anyway Lisi you're

doing it anyway but man this is not

gonna turn okay the economy is doing

better than anybody hoped sure alright

so this was it turns out looks like both

the left and the right agree it was

exactly the right time to get tough on

trade with China okay but even though we

were totally wrong about this and even

though we were totally wrong about the

way he had approached North Korea he's

got other problems I'm sure there are

other things he's doing wrong there must

be other other unrelated things that

he's just doing completely wrong let's

talk about those for a while so same

thing with Iran except I think there's a

little less pushback this time

here's what I liked about his Iran

warning the thing the first thing I like

about it is a rad warning is that it's

on Twitter and it's public I love the

fact that it's public because he's

talking to the public of the United

States and he's letting Iran see the

reaction directly would no filter from

the public and so they can look at his

tweet that says if you if you mess with

us we will end you meaning and the

regime and in Iran not kill all the

people that should be the proper the

proper interpretation is that we would

change their regime not that Iran would

cease to exist as a country and so the

Ayatollah can look at the comments to

the tweet and I haven't looked at him

but I imagine that the comments are

largely supportive of the concept then

if Iran goes too far we've got a pretty

dangerous you know president and he's

unpredictable and I'm pretty sure he

would use the opening to read to redo

the Middle East so the last thing that

Iran wants to give a president Trump is

an excuse

to redo the map of the Middle East what

do they imagine that a president Trump

would like to do we wouldn't mind

redoing the map of the Middle East if

the point of it was to make it a safer

place for Israel for our other allies in

the region so I think they're gonna look

at his comments and say I do not see the

citizens of the United States pushing

back on this idea of eliminating Iran

and if the citizens are not pushing back

on it and I don't think we are in

general obviously there's always people

on both sides of everything but I don't

think the public's pushing back on it so

imagine you're over in Iran you're

looking at the biggest military ever

assembled in the history of the galaxy

it's pointing all of its guns at you

you've got the most unpredictable

president who it should be sad wouldn't

mind redoing the Middle East's if he had

a reason you know if he had an excuse at

the moment he has no excuse at the

moment there's not a immediate need for

him to you know remove the regime in

Iraq not at the moment

do they want to give him a moment do

they want to create an excuse that would

give this president with the biggest

military ever created in the galaxy in

the history of humanity do you want to

give him an excuse to use some of those

weapons you don't so what I love this

was the clarity of it I think a normal

president would have said something

along the lines of Iran if you mess with

us there will be a big response right

big generic

if you do something for us all all

options are on the table now I do like

it when our government says all options

are on the table I like that as a I've

always liked that as just a standard a

good thing to say keeps all your options

open makes them wonder but when Trump

does it he goes way beyond all options

are open he makes it binary if you screw

with us we will end your whole country

that's as clear as you can get now again

and the whole country does not mean I

yeah and I think we all agree does not

mean kill all the people in there and

because we kind of like not even kinda

we like the Iranian people by the way if

you've ever spent any time with Iranian

people in America they are unusually

warm awesome people the average Iranian

who lives in this country whether first

or second generation are really great

people

so I'm pretty sure anybody who's had any

contact with an Iranian in this country

has by and large a pretty positive

opinion so we certainly don't dislike

the people of Iran but we have some

problems with their government and the

president's very clear about that

difference and Israel's very clear about

that difference which I believe is

legitimate by the way I think the lit

the array the Israeli people don't have

a beef with Iranian people I just don't

think that's the mountain not much of a

thing it's really government to

government problem and it's good to keep

it that way

of course the headlines are all about

the Game of Thrones finale last night I

would like to show you in a one-act play

my reaction to the finale of Game of

Thrones yes I slept through these parts

of the finale what I took away from the

finale was and people died and it was

over but I don't want to talk about Game

of Thrones because that's not

interesting from this periscope what I'm

going to talk about is their Game of

Thrones the finale is about a third of

all the news today something like a

third of all the the real estate and the

time spent I'm talking about news is

about a TV show can you have a better

administration the Trump administration

then to make one third of the news about

a TV show do you have any idea how much

that signifies the golden age let me

tell you what the golden age looks like

I remember the golden age i defined as a

time when most of your problems are

solved or on the way to being solved

alright so here are the headlines from

the golden age there's stuff about a

ford cutting cutting workers now that

would be negative right there's a very

big company they're cutting workers

except that the context is the strongest

economy the United States has ever had

so really it's one company having some

trouble which is news it's definitely

news it's not good news but it's not

about the economy it's about one company

so that it so that's probably a quarter

of the page as that another another big

piece of this is CNN's home page so I'm

looking at how much real estate is

devoted to each kind of topic then

there's a whole bunch of stuff about how

this Justin Amash is talking about

impeachment there isn't going to happen

that's a big story is about some person

is against the president but it doesn't

really matter because the Pietschmann

can because the republicans have too

much control in the Senate

it's a story without a story it's a

story about something that can't happen

impeachment actually just can't happen

alright here's some more there's a big

piece about Buddha judge and his

appearance on Fox News who cares

there was a candidate who had a town

hall on Fox News which probably ended

his chances of winning because he

appeared on Fox News it probably didn't

work out to his favor then there's a

bunch of stuff about weather and blah

blah blah

nothing nothing and then Game of Thrones

that's it

think about that for a moment will you

there isn't really any bad news how do

you have a whole page of of CNN and the

worst

they can come up with is people didn't

like the Game of Thrones ending that's

really amazing isn't it once more good

news here it comes

AOC recently said that she's open to the

conversation about nuclear energy as

part of the green New Deal

it gets better and then she adds

especially the newer technologies boom

goes the dynamite do you feel it

that was the far left and the far right

boop

it's the biggest news in the world it's

not on the CNN homepage because it's

sort of not the news that they like to

specialize on it's also not on the fox

news page because fox news doesn't like

to give you know too much positive

attention to a or C they're far more

likely to do a story about her and if

it's negative but it's also not in CNN

CNN would like to do a positive stories

about AMC their look their audience

would love that but AOC is being smart

about nuclear energy say what you will

about anything else her views on the

economy etc I'm not talking about

anything else she's done that you don't

like she does represent a big point of

view and an influential point of view

even if it's not big on the right and

she has said on ambiguously open to the

conversation of nuclear especially the

newer technology so in other words she

now understands there is a difference

this is the this is the biggest news in

the world completely ignored why because

nuclear energy is is probably the

biggest part of what's gonna drive drive

the world's economy in the next 3040

years is probably one of the biggest

factors and she just endorsed the

Commerce

now I'm pretty sure she knows enough

about the topic that when she says I'm

open to the conversation it means she's

already agreed that the risk/reward

makes sense that's sort of how I

interpret it that she knows the risk

versus the reward of nuclear when you

when you look at it in the context of

climate change being in her opinion a in

a an extinction event potentially then

then suddenly she has essentially

endorsed the path that most people on

the right would say makes sense

as long as she's saying do everything

fast do more wind do more solar develop

you know new technologies as fast as

possible maybe look at ways to take co2

out of the atmosphere and also look hard

at nuclear newer technologies that is

the the thinking style the point of view

the the way to frame our our a risk for

climate change in the most completely

productive way because whether you

believe climate change is the big risk

or a small risk or no risk at all you

still want as much green energy and a

low-cost energy which is what nuclear

gives you as you can get so this is like

one of the most positive developments in

the world now can all of you take a

little more padding on the back I like

I'd like to prime you you know how this

works one hand back here get ready to

pat yourself on the back because there

will be a moment in which this makes

perfect sense prepare yourself to give

yourself a self pat on the back here it

comes you you and this periscope have

watched me and especially with the help

of Mark Snyder who's been the primary

advocate about the newer nuclear

technologies you seen you seen us talk

all the time many of you have helped to

boost that message

you've helped you've helped me boost it

on Twitter

you boosted on periscope do you think

that are collected boosting of that

message about the newer technologies of

nuclear stuff do you think that that

message got through to AOC we don't know

well what do you think yeah I'm gonna

watch your messages for a while because

I'm not gonna Pat myself on the back

until I have agreement do you think that

message got through

probably I'm seeing yeses all right

that's enough fat yeses we can't confirm

this but here's what we do know and

ready and ready we do know we did the

right thing we boosted the right message

and the right people receive do have the

message I'm sure other people got to

them I'm sure that we're not the only

force but we were one of them get ready

pat yourself on the back good job good

job

now and I'm gonna say this again there

is no way for us to know if anything

that we did collectively or individually

made a difference we don't know that but

it sure looks like you did in at the

very least we were part of a collective

group that were sending a similar

message so at the very least we were

part of boosting the message so look at

this model and I've said this before

that social media to a large extent is

the government because you saw that the

government was out of tune I think

that's actually a really good way to put

it

I'm gonna I'm gonna go with this analogy

it seemed like the government was out of

tune meaning that they didn't even seem

to have a disagreement there wasn't

really a disagreement on nuclear it was

more like one side was ignoring it or

maybe wasn't quite up to date don't know

exactly what was going on but it was

attitude there was an obvious solution

or at least a path forward

for this green New Deal and for climate

risk and the government seemed to be

missing the obvious they were just they

were like one step off they were they

were so close to being on the right path

but it just some wiggle and in the

system and I feel as though social media

allowed the public to fine-tune the

government and to get them at least

saying oh yeah that does need to be part

of the conversation so a or C you said

it now needs to be part of the

conversation and of course people on the

right have already been there and then

you've got people who who are respect

the most such as Bill Gates the reason I

respect them the most is because it's

obvious that his intentions are all in

the positive direction he does the work

he's brilliant and he's not political he

does not aligned with any side all right

so Bill Gates is still mine probably my

number one role model in the world Sam

so that's all good news

let's talk about this this seems like

this should be the biggest story in the

world but isn't I say that a lot but but

let me develop this this point a little

bit so we know now that apparently Comey

wrote in an email that included his

upper echelon staff dude that apparently

according to Comey in an email so this

was back in the beginnings of the

investigation about rush occlusion so

copies had an email that Brennan

insisted the dossier be included in the

Intel assessment to which I say to

myself how do you interpret that Brennan

would know it seems to me you know can't

read his mind but common sense tells you

that he would have known

that the sources of the Intel were

Russian Russian spooks Brennan had to

know that the source of the Intel was

Russian you know Intel people and then

he he wanted it to be included in our

system which would have changed the

result or had a high chance of changing

the result of the u.s. election think

about that what is being reported is a

Brennan was aware that Russian Intel

people had created a questionable

document that almost certainly was false

information because they came from

sources that would give you false

information and that it was by its

nature would affect the election now we

see people on the right say hey doesn't

that prove that Brennan was the one who

was doing the Russian a collusion to

which I say that makes a hundred percent

sentence Brennan knew what he was doing

he knew where the sources were he knew

he knew how reliable they were which was

not he knew that it was disinformation

or he had to know because he was smart

enough to know that from high Russian

sources who wanted to change the result

of the election and Brennan wanted to

change the result in the election the

same way the Russians did apparently by

some kind of so but no let me let me

modify that statement I don't know that

the Russians wanted to change it the

same way Brennan wanted to change it we

know that the Russians wanted to

interfere and all that looked like

interference so but why is it that the

entire news cycle is not a Russia

collusion is real and it turns out it

was bred and who who as far as we can

tell until you know it's not confirmed

you need investigations but as far as we

can tell the paper trail

says that Brennan and Comey were

involved with Russian interference in

other words that they colluded with

Russia how is that not objectively

obviously true how is it not completely

obviously objectively true that Brennan

and Comey have a paper trail saying that

they indeed colluded with Russia

meaning colluded with the steel dossier

that came from Russian sources which

they knew to change this to interfere

with the election how is that not

completely a hundred percent a true

statement now again you know you need

investigations to make sure that emails

meant what you thought and people were

doing what well we imagine but here's

here's my theory it's cognitive

blindness meaning that we can logically

see the connection that I just drew but

we can't quite wrap our heads around the

fact that we have the story opposite for

two years plus because the whole story

had been framed so vigorously as the

Trump Organization was colluding with

Russia and now we know it was literally

the opposite the Trump Organization was

being framed by people colluding with

Russia now again it could could turn out

that that interpretation that I just

gave you is overstated that could be the

case but the evidence in that we have

very strongly suggests that was the case

and there doesn't seem to be a counter

narrative to that in other words there's

nobody arguing the other side there's

just the evidence that very clearly says

that and that's it that's all we know so

I think that the human brain can't make

that much of a rant a 180 it's hard to

go from two and a half years of thinking

the Trump's were involved with Russia

collusion we can get ourselves or some

of us can to a new truth that that

didn't happen but if you noticed that

half of the country can't even get there

half of the country is still stuck in

the

the last movie where they believe that

the mullah report actually shows

collusion there they're actually reading

the same page and they can't even see

the words the way they were intended

apparently because they see a completely

different story on the same page and

it's a page written by lawyers to be as

clear as possible and as clear as

possible as we could not we could not

determine any collusion or conspiracy so

I think that what we're seeing is a

weird cognitive blindness that we see in

a lot of different situations where

where it's just too hard for people to

get their heads into that new frame

because it's so different from what it

had been two years ago and it's not

because the facts don't clearly and

unambiguously suggest that's what we

should be talking about because the

facts do clearly and unambiguously state

that Brennan was colluding with Russia

to change the result of a u.s. election

I just don't see any other way those

facts could be interpreted but again

that's just the facts of evidence

you always have to wait give people

their day in court Brennan like anybody

else is innocent until proven guilty I

don't want to suggest otherwise but if

you're in the news business you have to

prove you have to you should be talking

about the news that is in evidence

and the news and evidence does not look

good for Brennan why is that not on the

front page why is the front page of CNN

not well it looks like there's very

strong evidence that the head of the CIA

was trying to change the results of the

election and we've got a paper trail

that proves it and all evidence points

that way perfectly what how's that not

the front page of seeing it there's

something definitely broken in the

system all right let's talk about

executives that deutschebank

so here's the headline I think this was

CNN Headline executives that deutsche

bank rejected the advice of their

specialists when some transactions by

the Trump Organization that got flagged

all right so there's a bank Deutsche

Bank and they have

specialists who look for transactions

that are questionable these specialists

it is reported flagged transactions from

the Trump Organization and then upper

management looked at the the situation

and decided to let it go in other words

they did not pursue any kind of legal or

other recourse now is that a story if

you have never worked for a bank that

looks like kind of a story doesn't it I

have worked for a bank I have many years

as a banker working in the number of

different areas within the bank pretty

pretty wide wide experience from lending

to retail to the back systems etc so I

have a pretty broad experience in

banking let me interpret this story from

the ridiculous version that you're

getting to what it really means all

right I'm gonna do the bank translation

here's what this means when you hear

that specialists flagged something do

you hear oh my god the top experts in

banking had an opinion but the bosses

overrode it is that what you're here

because you shouldn't be hearing it that

way when you hear that a specialist

flagged something that just means there

was a big transaction and maybe you had

a lot to do with cash that's it the

reason that a specialist would flagged a

transaction is just because it's a big

dollar amount and maybe cash is involved

that's it

that's the whole story do you know how

often there's a big transaction with

cash in vault all the time all the

freaking time and those specialists

probably flag all of them do you know

the banks you know if you if you do any

transaction over $10,000 and maybe the

dollar amounts changed since I was a

banker but in the old days anything over

$10,000 got flagged do you know how many

times I as a banker flagged a

transaction

I personally as a bank teller flagged a

lot of transactions because there were

something about them that I needed a

supervisor to look at something about it

there was an as the bounds of my

responsibility maybe it was just a big

dollar amount maybe it was a complicated

transaction I wanted to make sure it got

done right maybe there was something

about it there was non-standard it got

flagged it means nothing that

specialists flagged the transaction and

when you see that their superiors looked

at it and decided it wasn't worth

pursuing what you have described is

every day a bank that's every day at the

bank every day underlings bring things

to their boss and they say here's some

things that are non-standard what do you

think and the boss says ok ok ok ok ok

Boop pretty much all of the things that

get flagged as non-standard eventually

get improved what is missing in this CNN

story what is missing is how often this

happens and what percentage of things

that give flagged end up being illegal

what is your guess if you hear a story

with no context specialist flagged some

transactions in the bank

what is your brain go to well your brain

automatically thinks incorrectly that

this must be an unusual bothersome kind

of thing in which you know you really

have to worry about it they leave out

the context the context is how often do

things get flagged in the bank and then

they just can prove because that's just

the process that's the normal banking

process the normal banking process is

people flagging stuff all the time and

then bosses saying that's ok I'm glad

you flagged it but I see no problem

ordinary ordinary business reported as

extraordinary all right now that's fake

news isn't it would you say if something

that's completely ordinary is reported

the opposite as if it's extraordinary

isn't that fake news in what way could

that not be fake news because imagine

how this couldn't have been reported

also accurately Deutsche Bank is a bank

like normal banks okay normal they have

processes in which anything that's

non-standard or a big dollar amount for

example gets flagged by people who watch

this stuff they check it with their

superiors and 99% of the time or

whatever the percentage is there's

nothing wrong with the transaction and

the superiors to prove it and it goes

through that is called banking what I

just described is banking flagging

things looking for exceptions making

sure all risks have been accounted for

or making sure that the right people are

brought into the decision banking it's

just banking that was the story that's

the only thing we know now if it turns

out that there are other facts that come

out that's another story but the story

we know is that banking happened that's

it that's all we know all right a little

too much on that is or else we got

there's a story up in the Atlantic I

think I tweeted it around yesterday then

apparently researchers tried to figure

out if people are good at predicting and

they tried to figure out if people who

are experts in a topic are better at

predicting what the future will be in

that topic now what do you think they

found out is it true that experts in a

topic are better than average better

than just someone else at predicting

what will happen and the answer is nope

they're not no difference at all so then

they did another they did more research

and they found out that the people who

were best at predicting had wait for it

wait for it good talent stacks now the

article doesn't use my term for it but a

talent stack an idea I introduced in my

book had a failed almost everything and

still win big is the idea that if you

have a little bit of knowledge

on a bunch of different fields you

you're better at predicting that's

really my primary message in that book

is that you you have a better

understanding of your world including

being able to predict what happens if

you have a broad broad set of experience

so for example someone who knows just

science would be handicapped compared to

somebody who knows science but they also

have a business background or they also

have a philosophy background or they

also have a history background or an

artist background so any any kind of

breadth of experience allows you to see

around corners better than if you're in

a silo and you're really good at one how

is this important well I'll tell you so

somebody asked me the name of the book

again my my book that all this came from

the idea of talent stacks is how to fail

at almost everything and still win big

you don't need to remember the name of

the book just remember my name and how

to fail all right it's a long title so

if you look for my name and my books

you'll find it if you look for how to

fail you'll find it that's it

now here's the good news the good news

is that my upcoming book loser think is

a deeper dive on what you should know

about each field to make you better at

understanding your world in other words

I'm gonna take you for a tour about what

a historian would know you know how an

artist would look at things how how an

economist would look at things but I'm

not going to teach you those disciplines

I'm just going to teach you the key

things that people learn the the

big-picture stuff so that you'll

instantly instantly after you read the

book be able to see how the world looks

through a variety of filters instead of

just one so if you want to see the world

through more than one filter this gives

you a preview of those other filters so

you can you can see around objects you

can see the future a little better and I

was very happy to see that this research

completely

completely agrees with the notion that

if you have wider experience you don't

have to be an expert you just have to

know a few of the facts about you know

how economists see in the world I give

you an example so here's just the

smallest example if you had never heard

of the the idea of sunk costs economists

all know what a sunk costs are it means

you've already spent a lot of money here

but your next decision should not

account for the fact that you spent a

lot of money already you should treat

money that you've already spent as if

it's gone and it's a new decision today

whether to spend more money on that same

thing

now that's an economists way of viewing

the world which an artist might not

think of an artist might say man I've

already put a million dollars into this

I'd better put some more money into it

to justify the million I already spent

that's how artists think economists say

that millions gone it's just gone I have

a new decision today about whether my

new hundred thousand should go in or not

but it has nothing to do with the money

I've already spent so that's a very tiny

little adjustment in how these to see

the world the economists versus the

artists so the loser thing book will be

a deeper dive into concepts like that

things that are real easy to learn like

some costs but if you haven't been

exposed to them at least once you

wouldn't know that that was something

you needed to consider all right you're

gonna like that book by the way that'll

be out around in November you can

pre-order it now all right I love the

fact that only a few members of Congress

have read the Muller report what does

that tell you about the world now I

always tell you that you should check

your filter on the world against your

observation so if you believe the world

is a certain way but you observe things

are not going the way your view of the

world predicts well maybe then you

should consider a new filter on the

world my filter on the world as you know

is that people don't use facts to make

decisions now in the in the specific

context of say finance you

if you're doing accounting or if you're

doing a scientific experiment than facts

matter of course but our normal life

we're not doing science you know I

didn't do any science today you probably

didn't either we but we make lots of

decisions in lots of irrational ways and

the facts don't really influence us so

much

the Muller report shows that as clearly

as anything could show you we were all

waiting for the Muller report because we

thought the facts would change how we

feel about stuff I never believed that

to be the case my filter around the

world is that it didn't matter how many

facts were in the molar report had it

said that the president was totally

guilty the Republicans would have said I

don't see it

I'm reading I see the report I don't see

any guilt in there had the report said

that he was completely exonerated you

know that the Democrats would say I

don't see in the exoneration there I'm

reading the same reporter you are now as

luck would have it Muller was ambiguous

enough that it was easy in this case to

to take whatever opinion you wanted oh

yeah he totally made the case for

impeachment says Justin Amash

Republicans say I'm looking at the same

thing I don't see any justification for

impeachment in there so if you expected

that the Mullen report would have facts

and that the facts would change people's

opinion you were in a different movie

than I was in my movie there was never a

chance that the facts would change

anybody's opinion now you could imagine

that there would be some kind of fact

that would take in so far it would

change your opinion in other words like

a real smoking gun or even more than a

smoking of a videotape of a crime you

know you could imagine is you could

imagine some extreme where the facts

would actually change people's opinions

but it wasn't likely that we were gonna

see that I mean we would have seen that

coming ahead of time it would have been

leaked or something so within the range

of what this molar report was likely to

be you you should have predicted

the start that it wouldn't change any

minds if you are predicting it would

change minds make a mental note that

your filter on the world did not mean

reality make another note then my filter

on the route unreality the facts don't

change opinions was correct so much so

that most of the politicians who deeply

care about this biggest question in the

world didn't even bother to read it and

the people who could see the unredacted

versions largely didn't even bother

going a look nobody really cared about

the facts so just keep a note that at

that point of view succeeded this time

in predicting again all right I think I

have a question about social media so

maybe you can so this is a question not

an opinion I want you to fact-check me

here I need somebody who's who's got a

little more knowledge about api's and

social media platforms than I do

could somebody create a an interface a

program an application that could post

your content to any of the different

platforms now this part I know is true

so there are like you HootSuite and and

other programs that light that let you

lay you schedule and then post your

content to multiple platforms but could

somebody make a version of that in which

you could also read content from only

the platforms you wanted to read but but

collective from all the platforms and

also post all the platforms and and

here's the best part because I think the

answer is yes to all those things right

but this is where you need to fact-check

me could you create a higher level

platform that simply interacts with all

the social media platforms for the

purpose of being able to create

competent

where none exists let me say more about

that

what can Facebook do that Twitter cannot

do not much right I can post a picture

on Twitter I can post a picture on

Facebook now there's a small difference

meaning that my Twitter posts are open

to the public whereas my Facebook posts

I can make private and/or public very

small change Twitter can do that right

could you build an interface above all

the social media programs that did

whatever filtering you wanted to do but

here's the important part

here's the important part could you when

one of the platform's starts

discriminating move your attention in

traffic to the one that is

discriminating less or not at all so for

example you see a number of competing

platforms I saw one today called

Politico calm now I think they want to

be sort of a competitor to Twitter for

political policies and be unfiltered but

of course they have a rough road because

it started to get anybody to go to a new

platform but if you had a platform on

both of the platforms you could just add

that one in there and you wouldn't have

to use any extra effort to post to there

or to read there and then over time you

can sort of move your traffic where

people are being less abusive let me

give you the example suppose suppose you

and all your friends had this new higher

level application that was simply

interacting with different social media

platforms and Facebook D platforms

canvas that one's all right now they had

her on suspension for a week for reasons

that when they looked at it even they

decided we're not sufficient so they

reversed it but you as a consumer if you

see somebody getting D platformed you

could very easily just check the box

that takes that platform and if your and

if your traffic for a while because you

would still see everybody's tweets

everybody's pictures but they would just

be coming to you through a different

platform because people would be using

all the platforms just by being part of

one app so could you create competition

where there is none

by some kind of a higher app that would

reward Twitter let's say for being more

and I think this is true there's

probably a difference with the platforms

in terms of their openness to free

speech we saw off for example the

Twitter I think has been more cautious

than Facebook at a few cases and it

would be easy for you to let's say in

sense Twitter by giving them more

traffic and take traffic away from

Facebook but people would still see all

your posts and all your content because

they could see it through other other

platforms now I don't know if any of

this is legal or if the platforms would

you know close you down so that you

couldn't use their platform with this

third party I suspect that would be the

problem so the the general idea and

maybe the specific applications is not a

good one but the general idea is how can

we as customers put market pressure on

the platforms to stay within the bounds

of good censorship and not bad

censorship when I say good censorship

there is content I don't want to see on

the platforms I don't want to see Isis

propaganda I don't want to see

anti-semitic stuff all right so I don't

mind that the platforms are or are

editing but when they go too far you

want the market to immediately respond

in ways that influence their bottom line

immediately because let's say for

example if Facebook well I'll give you

I'll give me a concrete example when

Candace almonds got kicked off on

Facebook for a little while

mentally I said to myself I'm just not

going to log on to Facebook for a week

so I personally boycotted Facebook but

but I didn't give up my account

nor would I I think that canceling your

account is sort of you know punching

yourself in the face because we sort of

need the social media accounts to be

part of society but I could certainly

say to myself I'll bet I could I could

go a week without logging onto Facebook

because all the all the posts will still

be there you know yeah if I feel like it

but I probably wouldn't look as many

posts if I wait a week I'm not gonna

bother to go down the whole thing I

might look at the new one so I said to

myself I will mentally boycott them but

wouldn't it have been good if I had a

platform I could just click them off for

a week and I can give them how about

this shouldn't shouldn't the public

could be able to give Facebook a one

week suspension that's the way to frame

it finally okay I accidentally got to

the right answer by feeling around right

now social media platforms can give an

individual a one week suspension but the

public cannot give the social media

platforms of what week suspension but

why not how hard would it be for that to

be a thing now I'm not saying that the

conservatives should all cancel their

accounts with Facebook if they see

somebody get a suspension but you could

certainly make your feeling known by

simply giving them a one-week suspension

of of clicks and if something like if

something like a quarter of all

conservatives gave Facebook a one-week

suspension they would actually see it in

their bottom line they would actually

notice that their graph just wouldn't

just plunged 10 percent for no reason or

whatever so just something to think

about so here's here's the the general

thought is this whenever you have

competition you get better results and

the social media situation has evolved

to a point where we don't have equality

of competition the customers don't have

as much power as they should have

you know usually the customer is always

right social media is the one place

where that's just not true

Am I am i right for most businesses the

statement the customer is always right

you know within within balance of course

is a fair statement and companies

actually act as though that's the case

oh whatever you want we'll make this

right will we want to keep you as a

customer for life etc but the big social

media platforms they don't really need

you they need most people but they don't

need you apparently and so there's

there's nothing stopping them from just

you know slapping off a customer even if

that customer maybe was in the gray area

there's just no penalty for it so I

think to stop the slippery slope you

need a little bit more customer control

than we currently have so maybe we'll

see that and by the way my my original

statement about the D platforming of

conservatives was always that the

slippery slope doesn't exist meaning

that a counter force always always

appears when it looks like a slippery

slope is gonna happen so you never

really get the slippery slope because

the character force always appears and

the counter force is people saying ok

you got rid of that person and I can see

why you did it even though I would

prefer for a speech like that wouldn't

make sense I don't like it but at least

I understand why you say here's our

standards this is outside of our

standards at least I get it

it's credible even if I prefer it didn't

happen but when you start throwing in a

Candice Owens

that's not credible the Conservatives

who look at that saying whoa whoa what

did she say they got her kicked off the

platform and then you say that's it you

got kicked off the platform front of

that and there was a big push back so

the push back does appear when things go

too far now that exact level where

things end up might not be where you

want it but it's not going to go forever

and I think I think you already saw the

pushback I think the ironic here's the

irony with the conservative

being banned the the worst problem about

being a trump supporter in 2016 was that

you were associated with the worst

people who were on the same side

my biggest problem in 2016 is that I

could so easily be lumped in with some

of the worst things that people could

say in the world who happened who also

happens like the president for their own

reasons not the same reasons as mine and

what happens when those people get

d-flat forms my credibility goes up so

I'm having a hard time completely being

against any banning of anybody when that

banning is good for me I hate to say it

but because I'm lumped in with a class

of people that I would not love myself

in with you know I would not identify

with other people's comments I just have

my own comments but it's easy for part

of the country to say yeah you're a

trump supporter you must be a neo-nazi

because those guys like Trump too I

would be pretty happy if all of those

voices the neo-nazis etc should they

should they violate anything I'd be

happy if they go away it makes it makes

me look better so it's sort of a make a

phone call go away there we go alright

so that's enough of that that's all I

got for now and I will talk to you

somebody said then who will defend you I

don't know what you mean am I happy with

unequal banning yes I am happy with

unequal banning let me complete that

thought somebody said would I be happy

if if the Conservatives got more banned

than the people on the left yes do you

know why

because when the people on the left are

allowed to be terrible they're ruining

the brand of all the people on the left

that the anti-trump errs can

self-immolate if the worst of them

pollute the rest of the brand if on the

conservative side the people who are

most extreme get banned then my brand

people who say good things about

President Trump improves now is that

free speech now it's not free speech

that is not free speech it is speech

within within a prescribed zone which is

you know not too extreme in any

direction so am I happy if I can live

within the approved does that one cuz I

don't think I've ever said anything that

would get me kicked off a platform and I

also don't think I ever would I don't

see any situation where I personally

would get deep platform I just don't see

it but if people who are making my brand

look bad look get deep platform I say

two things

hey that's not free speech because it

isn't but it's also a private company

and they have rules and standards and

they get to enforce those at the other

hand I say hey makes me look a little

better I don't know I'm not so sure that

you should worry about the other side

not giving us banned because every time

that they're allowed to go forward with

their awfulness

it just makes their whole side look less

credible alright that's all for now and

I'll make a bet with you that if I ever

get D platformed I will deserve it

there's there's my prediction alright so

here's another case where you can use

your filter on life to predict my filter

on life says that that there is no

slippery slope for these bands of

conservatives that there is no slippery

slope because the counter force has

already formed there would have been a

slippery slope if no counter force is

formed but they always do so my filter

says that

that somebody like me will never get

banned unless I really did something

that was legitimately bana Mille I don't

think I would intentionally so that's

that's the prediction if you think that

I will someday get banned keep that

prediction you had keep that prediction

in your head and see if it happens now

today I went after yesterday I went

after the SPLC for the the SPLC the

Southern Poverty Law Center who is

supposedly the entity which points out

all the the bad people on race so that

they can be deep platformed etc they

actually repeated the Charlottesville

fine people hopes in a tweet yesterday

so I reported them I mean actually

legitimately no joke this is not

political theater I legitimately

reported them for for spreading race

hoaxes because that race hoax is is

unambiguously false they should know it

and even if it's an accident it's the

same effect they need to get educated

and get rid of that that type of

speaking but that is absolutely racial

racially divisive on a top level you

know there's there's no I don't want you

to see any politics in this I'm not I'm

not it's not tit for tat it's not those

things this is legitimately hate speech

against Trump supporters who are mostly

white and they did it it was public its

unambiguously racially offensive to me I

am racially offended by that tweet and

it's it's all the things that they're

supposed to exist to not do they did

publicly and unambiguously so I reported

them now here's the thing we'll IBD

platformed for that I say no I say there

is no way that I would be deep

platformed for calling out bad racial

divisive stuff no way because I'm right

I think you have to at least be wrong

you know I actually be right this is

enough to keep you from being the

platform but you have to have a good

intention I think it's pretty obvious

that my intention is to get rid of a

racially divisive I never notice a

divisive divisive divisive people say

that differently and I'm never sure

which is the right way but it's racially

damaging and I wanted to get rid of it I

think that that kind of stuff has no

place in the public discussion because

it's fake and it's bad for everybody

so we'll say I don't think that a person

like me can get kicked off a platform

because I have both good intentions

and in this case you know I have the

truth on my side so you don't get kicked

off for that anyway I will talk to you

all later