Episode 534 Scott Adams - Predicting, Deutsche Bank, Brennan, China, Iran
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
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…
View segment →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,
View segment →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
View segment →. 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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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…
View segment →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