Episode 663 Scott Adams - The Simultaneous Sip Waits For No One. Unless you see it on Replay

hello everybody come on in it's the weekend well it's been the weekend but it still the weekend is a great great day so sore today when you just want to take a deep breath take stock of all the good stuff but most importantly you want to enjoy the simultaneous scent because when you do that it nearly guarantees that the rest of your day will be better than it would have been does it take much to enjoy it no it does not thanks for asking it doesn't take much at all thanks for the super art the virus Joe here's what you need to enjoy the simultaneous simple I think you know it's a cover above your glasses time to tell us the Tegrity thermos can't eat a Grail a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I'm partial to coffee and join me now for the simultaneous sip the best set of the day dopamine go sublime alright let's talk about Joe Biden here's an interesting angle that I don't believe I've seen anywhere so I should be the first person to introduce this idea but it might catch on here's the idea imagine if you will Joe Biden gets the nomination that's not crazy now I've predicted it won't happen because I predicted that he'll fail before the before it gets time to nominate and probably for some health or mental stability reasons the stabilities wrong word he's he's obviously lost a step all the Democrats can see it it's no longer a question of opinion you know it's it's now passed for an opinion into oh yeah we see it too but it's hard to talk him out of it because apparently there's nobody who has any influence who can apparently there's nobody who can talk to Biden and say you know you've been good for the country you know maybe take a step back so what happens if Biden gets the nomination here's the fun part he's gonna have to pick a vice president let's do a little bit of thought experiment let's say he picks a vice president from among the other contenders for president which would be quite reasonable quite normal he's not limited to that of course but it let's say he does who would he pick wait for it wait for it who would he pick who would have the most chance of invoking the 25th amendment with in conjunction with the regular processes for that who would support it maybe even promote it and take the job of prog president think about it if you voted for a Biden Carla Harris ticket I see most of you were getting ahead of me if if you voted for that ticket let's say you know the variables just lined up and against all odds Biden gets the nomination largely because let's say the country isn't paying attention anybody who's watched him in a debate it's gonna have a real problem we're thinking that that's a safe thing to do for the country but if there's any doubt in people's minds about whether Biden will be capable and they still want the benefit of thinking incorrectly but thinking that Biden could be too Trump they might have this tough question which is it's obvious he's not capable but what if there's a hot backup and here's here's the thing about Harris imagine a vice presidential pick that you could more easily imagine invoking a fairly radical solution the 25th amendment now I don't think it'd be radical in this case just because it would be quite cold for I think but I feel like Harris because she's a hard-ass by reputation and because she's obviously ambitious you know I guess they're all ambitious but she's also a prosecutor if I were to pick one personality type who would be willing to let's say overlook not overlook let's say who would be intellectually capable of sidelining loyalty I'm trying to say this is more a positive way not to make it negative someone who who has the critical thinking and experience and mental mindset of a prosecutor can put aside feelings for some you know greater process you know legal purposes and as sort of what she does so I would think that a prosecutor would be the best choice to be expected to be aggressive in acting quickly if there was a confidence problem with the president so we might see that happened and it would be a not impossible way for Harris to become president there's there's a interesting example of loser think in the news I like to call out now let me define loser thing for you but it's the title in my new book coming out November 5th I'll give you a little preview with the theme is the theme is that people who have experience across various different fields of study be they history psychology economics business technology engineering whatever the fields are the people who have a broader experience at least in the thinking styles not all the details not all the skills of those different disciplines but if you've been exposed to the way they think you're way ahead and understanding your world and communicating well I'll give you a trivial example if you had if you had never heard of science would it ever occur to you that you should do controlled experiments and you know double blinds and stuff like that probably not right because those things were not obvious until who wasn't Newton Isaac Newton I think was sort of the you know the the thought founder of a lot of science you can help me with the details but the point is throughout much of human history it wasn't obvious that you needed a controlled experiment and then you could rigorously test your way to something good now think how think how handicapped you'd be if you were a modern you know person in the modern world and you never heard a science now you don't have to be a scientist to know that controlled experiments make sense there was reason to explain alright so I'm gonna take that concept and gonna apply it to a conversation between sort of a public conversation I guess Bill Maher who did some who did a monologue in favor of fat shaming in other words his point was we should shame people to lose weight because of the health benefits economic benefits use societal benefits so James Corden who I think you know him from whichever late night show he's on he's got a very impressive impressive body work and in the entertainment industry so so the first thing I'm gonna say about James Corden is very successful I'm guessing very smart because if you look at the body of his work it's pretty broad in the entertainment industry it's very impressive but I checked to see what his educational background is and it's not science it's not engineering it's not economics it's not business now if somebody had did not have an educational background than those things one should expect that they don't maybe have a full grasp if they haven't been exposed to those things of what to do exactly in every situation because those are pretty useful fields so let me give you an example of what James Corden said no apparently James Corden has been struggling with his own weight for years I had to look at a picture of him to see what he was talking about and I don't know maybe it's because he works in LA but he doesn't look fat to me I don't know what he's talking about now I get that James Corden seems to have some genes that make him a little rounder maybe maybe old fat you know more strongly than other people so anyway the point is James Corden believes he's overweight so that's his self assessment I don't really see it in the pictures in any way that would be in any way I would call fat in America you know by American standards certainly not but he'll is probably lives and works in LA so it probably feels like that to him and I imagine it's going up and down over time but here's what he said so James Corden said this quote if making fun of fat people made them lose weight there'd be no fat kids in school and I'd have a six-pack right now now in this mode he was trying to make a serious point he wasn't making jokes now if it were a joke I wouldn't say well let's look at look at him factually you know pull it apart and see if it makes sense but but it wasn't a joke he said it in you know sort of an interesting way but it's as serious it's obviously a serious point in which he's saying that fat shaming doesn't work because if it did obviously every single kid gets fat shamed if there's in fact so how many of you think that's a good point in the comments we'll do a fun little thing is James Corden making a good point did that given that every kid who's overweight gets fat shame you can guarantee that zero zero kids who are overweight do not get fat shamed so we wouldn't see any fat people if it worked right set you so I'm looking at your comments and look at the mix a lot of you say yes a lot of you saying no why is it that it looks like about half of you or yes half of you or uh now why is it that you disagree on such a simple question and here's my hypothesis now this won't be true for every one of you I'm gonna make a general statement my hypothesis is the people who say this makes sense on average not every single person you could be the exception but on average the people think that James Corden is making sense probably have a similar educational background this is my speculation secondly the people who say he does not make sense probably have backgrounds that are more like economics probably more like business maybe more like engineering maybe more like science or at least I've been exposed to enough of those things that they they know how those fields think here's what's wrong with James Corden sentence and I'll read it again and then tell you why it's completely irrational okay if making fun of fat people made them lose weight there'd be no fat kids in school here's what's wrong with us and half of you already know it the other half are going to learn it for the first time we don't know what would have happened if this were a controlled experiment see you see what we see where this is going if this were a controlled experiment we might learn that 90% of people who are efficient go ahead and lose weight we might find that 10% do but the thing we don't know is what would happen if we did the experiment so when and let me say I should throw my opinion in here just so I don't get lumped in with one of the two opinions I'm talking about my opinion is closer to James Corden's opinion that the fat shaming is not good for society I just have different reasons for it so I'm anti fat shaming but his reason he gave is that if fat shaming it worked there wouldn't be any fat kids in school and that is a very sort of an artist opinion if all of your education was in the arts you wouldn't know that there was anything wrong with that opinion if you were a scientist that everyone here who had a scientific background sent up no controlled experiment no controlled experiment your statement is absolutely just a guess and half of you took that statement which is nothing more than a speculative cast and said oh yeah that's true there would be no fat kids if if fat shaming worked I guess that would take care of it all so here's the the big picture the big picture is if you'd been exposed to the some of the other more productive fields the way they think you don't have to be expert in any of them but if you just knew whether the fact they think you would have picked this up immediately enough on that there's a funny funny tweet by President Trump I forget who he was tweeting at but there was somebody on Twitter who was slightly notable who said in effect that she wouldn't want to be friends with President Trump but you know would vote for him for president as opposed to Andrew yang who she thinks she could be friends with but wouldn't vote for him for president and president Trump wisely and entertainingly tweeted back to her I'm good with that here with an exclamation Lord in other words he was accepting that he would rather be an effective president than to be the president everybody likes for his personality and I thought I thought it was a sort of a brilliantly persuasive tweet in terms of framing the public's opinion of the situation because the most productive frame that this president could put out there imagine this imagine if President Trump could sell what I'm gonna say next good and that's the first time I've seen him hinted and here's the sale I'm not asking you to like me personally I get it I don't want you asked to like me personally sometimes I'm kind of a dick but I'm gonna be a dick for you sometimes I'm kind of a bully but I work for you now I'm your bully I'm bullying you're an I'm gonna I'm gonna bully some other countries I'm gonna bully the Democrats I'm here I'm your bully that message is super appealing because people want to you see that most of president Trump's critics have this problem that they can't get past who he is and they don't want to validate that and they don't want to normalize it by the president giving this framework which is yeah I'm not I'm not gonna be your best friend I could see why you wouldn't like me my personality isn't for everybody I get it and you're fine and I'm fine with that at the same time let me do this effective job look at my statistics look at unemployment rates etc.

I'm doing a good job that is a really really productive frame because it gives it gives a fake because to the people who are on the fence about him the fake because if it's a term I made up and it has to do with the fact that we know scientifically people often need excuses a public excuse to do the thing they in their mind they want to do so the people who might want to support him but they know that associating their vote and their reputation with him would make them feel like his whatever they feel about his personality and that could be bad so if you allowed Democrats to say god I I just can't stand the guy but I like a good economy then it gives them a fake because a reason to do the thing in public that they want to do to privately because privately they might be thinking to themselves I would actually vote for that guy if it weren't so embarrassing because of the way he acts and you know I don't want to promote that and normalize it so it was a small tweet that you probably thought was just a joke you know just a nothing that went by but everything he does on Twitter whether he's thinking about this way or it just works out that way is a/b test he puts out a lot of stuff and they see how people respond and that message I thought was an excellent test an excellent a B test just to see if that idea could be maybe pushed a little further I'm not sure what kind of response he got there's another story about a Swiss company that built a very impressive high-end house entirely by robots now when you hear that you say I know the robots are taking over and and ultimately they will of course new new home construction will be robots it's just when certainly if you're looking at 20 years totally most new construction will be mostly robots I would say that's a safe very safe prediction in 20 years now if you say in five years I think you might see your first permitted robot built house maybe in ten years it's probably going to be competing with humans and twenty humans won't be competitive anymore except for for what do you call it reconstruction were upgrades upgrades will still be human for a long time because there's too many decisions being made unless it just becomes cheaper to tear everything down so here's the thing one of the biggest trends that the public doesn't see coming is is new home building systems and technologies so I'm saying systems to include all the planning organizing coordinating stuff in just the order in which you do things and how you integrate things all that those are systems then the technology is robots or 3d printing or homes that you can put together like a kit or somebody mentioned something called hempcrete today get rid of that it's hemp and creates like concrete book with hemp apparently if you use hemp and some kind of lie or limestone mixture you get this lightweight brick for a building it's not strong enough for four foundations but it's strong enough for walls and has the advantage that the hemp absorbed a bunch of co2 so you have buildings that instead of concrete so concrete will produce co2 by hempcrete because you're growing plants and then turning that into concrete you're actually absorbing co2 and you're locking it into the construction material and you're putting in your frickin wall and apparently has great qualities for moisture control and insulation so it's light which makes it easier it insulates as a good moisture control qualities and it and it actually absorbs co2 I mean when it's when the substance is growing not when you put it in your house so now I'm not saying that a hemp accrete will ever be a big thing so because you know who knows there might be other variables I don't know about but if you look collectively at all the things that are happening in the construction world it it's it's a revolution of a thousand droplets of water that are this giant tsunami and that this giant tsunami of you know just a whole bunch of different little things that are being tested and tried all over the world if the world of constructing things fundamentally changes it will lower the cost of living it will make living in some places economical when it wasn't you could build entire communities just for people with drug addiction take them out of a place where they can get drugs put them where they just can't get them and have a whole nice City there that you can live in it's just a drug free city so suddenly a whole bunch of societal problems can be more easily dealt with simply by changing your construction now what about the robots taking all the jobs that's a mixed bag because there are two trends and we don't know how they'll still net out one trend is that if robot takes you job you got to go get another job and maybe you don't make as much money so that's bad week we could assume that there's some of that coming toward us so robots taking construction jobs guarantee there's some of that comment but what if the net effect of these new technologies for building homes takes the cost of a really good quality home down to wait for it $75,000 let's say you could buy a really livable I'll say livable because it's designed to be really nice just low cost so you could have a really liveable affordable $75,000 house even if you're paying rent the rent on a $75,000 house is could it be pretty low so if you could get to that point suddenly you can you know have a lower end job and have a real high-quality life because you'd go home to a you know beautiful albeit inexpensive home all right oh I say the home is beautiful I mean you have to design the entire community so that it's the community that makes the living experience good similar to how college is awesome if you go to college your physical room is just as crappy a little space you share whether your roommate usually but the lifestyle is amazing because you walk out of your room and soul students and activities and you know there's central places you can go to have sports and all kinds of things all right I had a realization the other day about why the fine people hoax is so sticky and this would be a good just as a lesson in persuasion and how the brain works I want to add this I know most of you are too much about it so I'll give you all the whole background of the fine people hoax but it has to do with the fact that some large percentage of the country still believes the President Trump called the neo not he's in charlottesville quote fine people now that never happened and since it never happened and as clearly it never happened on the transcript clearly it never happened and when you look at the original video without it being selectively edited which is a problem so why is that the people are so sprung loaded spring loaded to believe this thing that is so easily debunked and now one reason is of course that the fake news shows the misleading edit so the country has been lied to right so somebody says my own ears I'm talking to you so whoever said whichever ones of you who are saying right now Scott it's not a hoax I heard it me personally with my own ears I watched it Scott you I don't know what's wrong with you Scott I literally watched it myself I thought so I'm talking to you the people who were saying that right now and I know there are a number of you on this periscope here's the thing that I realized as to why you think that thing because you're wrong it didn't happen and you can prove it just look at the transcript just look at the the full video that goes all the way to the part where he says and I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and white Nationals so you have to get to that sentence in the clip to know that he was explicitly and without being prompted and without asking he said I'm not talking about the neo-nazis right so why do people believe it here's my insight I think people are conflating two events all right the first event is a real event this so the next thing I'm going to say actually did happen that when the event first happened and the the woman was killed by the neo-nazi in the car and Trump was talking about it after he did say so this part's true there are bad people on both sides now here's the realization back when Trump first said that what did the public say when he said they're bad people on both sides if you remember everybody said what the hell are you talking about one side was literally neo-nazis like not that's not our opinion they were literally neo-nazis who organized with torches and and one of them killed somebody so how in the world can you say that the people who are protesting them are the bad people as the people who are the bad people you know the actual racist how in the world can President Trump say that so that was the first controversy I remember he said that at a time when the public didn't know much about antiphon what they knew about Anti Fog is that they were protesting the racists say you say to yourself there's no way this is a moral equivalent president Trump you're totally wrong protesting races is not morally equivalent to being racist duh right time goes by what do we find out about antiphon meaning we the public at large what do we learn about antiphon in the time that has passed as son Charlottesville what we learned is that the president was 100% right there were bad people on both sides an tyfa as of course like you know any large organization a lot of different personalities and I'm sure there are there are good people we joined anti far for all the right reasons in their mind at least they think it's some greater good but we do know no now and it's unambiguous it's something that both sides of the political world would accept the anti-fog wears costumes and brings weapons and looks for violence and that they've attacked people from behind now again not every anti phone number is violent we all acknowledge that but as an organization they have some bad people now that wasn't obvious to the public at large when President but first said there are bad people on both sides so the very first thing that happened was people said wait you're you're acting like both sides are somehow morally equivalent this is the new insight I had that the first incident in which we now know President Trump was a hundred percent correct I mean we're actually considering designating anti far as domestic terrorists if you're even in that conversation you've got some bad people in your group right so so that part's true and I think that gets conflated in people's minds when that a separate separate time in a separate event and but soon after President Trump said there were quote fine people on both sides now when he said they were fine people on both sides the context was different in that case he defined his terms and that's the part that gets edited out of the videos so if you haven't seen the full video you were intentionally being hoaxed basically by the media because they've left out the context intentionally now the context is the president very clearly and explicitly said I'm not talking he said this actual sentence this is his actual sentence I'm not talking about the white nationalists and the neo-nazis they should be condemned it totally as clear as you could possibly be and then he explained to who he was talking about was people who had showed up on both sides of the question of whether the statue should stay or whether it's offensive and should leave and his argument is that they were fine people who could disagree on the statue who have nothing to do with the people who are marching with the tiki torches now whenever I point this out to people and so here's the insight the insight is that the original statement of bad people on both sides seemed untrue when he said it but over time we now know it was true completely true bad people on both sides just not all of them that there were bad people there and now we also and then that gets conflated with the fine people on both sides and then people forget that that context was about the non-racist protesters and they he defined his terms very clearly so that's my insight I think that what makes this special is not just the fake news not just the fact that the people primed to believe it our prime to believe it those those would be enough but when you add those two events that are similar enough that your brain conflates them automatically I mean even when I described it to you it was it was you probably had a thought of right I got to pay attention because it's a little hard to follow and that's what makes it so sticky that bad people on both sides and find people on both sides got conflated in your mind so those of you who are on this periscope who said when I started that so that was wrong how do you feel right now now that you've actually heard the the explanation and I would invite you to look at the hash tag hash tag find people hoaxes and you can see some stuff on Twitter that will lead you to the actual transcript and the actual videos and it's gonna blow your mind it's gonna blow your mind to learn how badly you were wrong about one of the most basic stories of our reality all right so enough on that I saw SE Cupp who's what would you call her and I know analyst pundit host I don't know what title she has on CNN I think she was allegedly Republican ish but sort of is anti Trump ish so she's more of a she's sort of leaving left at the moment for CNN I don't know her whole story commentator somebody says let's call her a commentator if she did a very good piece about how the Democrats are almost not even trying to win and I thought it was really well done even with her her facial gestures so if you get a chance to see that s SE Cupp little video clip it's pretty short which he goes through how the Democrats are so incompetent the group of them that it's almost as if not almost is this it looks like not literally but it you know just on the surface it looks like they're trying to lose it's so bad but it's a really good piece all right see what else we got going on Kyle bass investor Kyle bass who seems to be one of the strongest voices against doing business with China at all tweeted today that apparently and he seems credible enough that I believe this is true but like everything that I hear I always go at it with a little bit of skepticism the claim is that the Chinese telecom company has some nodes in America in other words some American companies have at some point bought Chinese technology for switches or routers or whatever and put it in put it in the network in the United States proper but that that has allowed China to look at our traffic now I don't know is that true apparently some of the traffic is being routed from the United States to China so they can look at it if they wanna if that's true and Kyle Bass is saying that we have to like take that equipment out of the country if if it's even a little bit true that the Chinese equipment might be sending our our private traffic over to China so they can take a look at it we have to change that tomorrow that's not even the next week anything is it isn't that sort of you've got to go to those telecom companies the President of the United States or whatever agency needs to say you've got it you've got to tell your customers that there that their traffic is not private from China and you've got to get rid of that so yesterday I was talking to a international business person so I'll tell this story without the details because the international business person is listening to this is going to be having the simultaneous up on his commute so without naming names somebody told me that he recently went to China and and the result of a short business trip to China is that his laptop was so infected with with presumably you know hacks from official or unofficial Chinese sources that his tech people are telling him to grind it up it is so infected and so dangerous to even go into China and use their Wi-Fi in a hotel that his his laptop is almost unfixable corrupted by spyware so that he's actually gonna have to take it out and like you know run out run it through a shredder or something so just think about that think about China is so unreliable as a as a business partner you can't even visit think about the fact you can't even visit the country unless you have either no technology or you get a some kind of a VPN or something I think if you have a VPN you're in good shape all right Andrew Yang's making news with a little public dust-up with a comedian whose last name is Gilles who apparently is going to be a new member of Saturday Night Live starting the season and of course the moment he was announced to get the job somebody dug into his past and found some racially offensive things he said allegedly in the service of humor that's the debatable part and so what he said what Gilles said was it looked like some kind of a podcast II situation he was talking with another person and he used the the the asian n-word it starts with a c alright I'm not even used to work so if you're if you're asian-american and somebody uses a slurry you the starts with the letter C you probably know what I'm talking about ch let's make it easier starts with the words CH third word is I third letter is I just in case you're not getting there quickly enough so I'm not going to say the word because I find that quite offensive and I mean offensive on behalf of other people nothing offends me personally but I I would be supportive of other people being offended when they heard that word so he uses that word and of course it becomes you know social media starts spreading around and then Andrew yang weighs in and he said to do oh he he basically he gave a soft rebuke so he he andrew yang basically because he said you know something was soft but sort of you know pushing back a little bit doesn't matter the exact words he said he'd be happy to talk to him about it so he said he'd be happy to sit down and and talk to Gilles about it and then of course there were calls for Gilles to be fired for being a racist and then yang Wei didn't again and here's the interesting part of the story all right yang weighs in with the second tweet and he said quote we would benefit from being more forgiving rather than punitive meaning that punitive punitive punitive isn't worth punitive let's say so here's so here's the summary Gillis says something that's offensive to asian-americans and anybody from has the Asian background and yang pushes back but softly there's a call for Gilles lose his job and then yang comes in and says now maybe we'd benefit from being more forgiving rather than punitive I love that honestly that in my mind the front-runner on the Democrat side he's like the only person who seems to understand Otto consistently he seems the only one who understands how incentives work have you noticed that now you could argue that with the ubi he's giving incentives wrong because hey why would you pay people to not work but I think he's just ahead of the curve on that meaning that we're not going to have an option about paying people directly once the robots take the job so it's not so much that yang doesn't understand that paying people to not work can have effect on their incentives of course he understands that but that we might not have a choice which is actually a pretty forward-thinking thing to say so my view on Yang of course is forming over time and you know at this point I still don't see him as a threat to get the nomination but based on this on this one interaction alone for yang to say publicly I think maybe we should ease up on some of this stuff from a Democrat now any Republican would have sent this right yeah don't you imagine it would have been easy for endemic in say a let's let's ease off on the political correctness but this wasn't even the case of political correctness per se it looked like it was the real deal and for yang to go soft on that and to recommend that maybe we should think in those terms is a real gamechanger I think and I think it's like an important it's an important addition to the public conversation so I would like to thank you Andrew yang for doing the public service so without even being elected I would say this is a valuable literally a valuable public service that he would introduce this more productive way of thinking I would call it so this is productive thinking now I can't tell this story without giving my complaints about Yang being a little racist himself now when I say yang is racing I'm using the term to talk about the the impact of someone's actions not their inner thoughts I do not believe yang is a racist in his inner mind I don't think Biden is I don't think Trump is I don't think people at that level or actual racist internally but it is certainly true that the impact of your decisions can you know the impact of your statements that your choice of words can make people feel bad can have racial consequences etc so that parts all true but I don't think Yang's inner thoughts are racist so two problems I have with that one you saw the debates he joked yang did he said quote I'm Asian so I know a lot of doctors it's kind of racist isn't it now again I'm not saying in his mind he's racist he's just making a joke and I would follow his own advice that maybe we should benefit from being more forgiving than Putin's punitive all right so I don't think that yang should be punished for a joke but here's the thing he should be a little bit more aware of and I think this is always worth noting it's a stereotype that's positive and so he's probably thinking that's just a positive stereotype and I'm talking about my own people I'm safe right but what would you feel like if you're not Asian if you're not asian-american in particular how would you take that comment it feels a little like my people are better than your people doesn't it is that is that sort of that the vibe you get from that because since being a doctor is considered a respectable thing that only smart hard-working people can accomplish saying that his group is that the group has a lot of smart hard-working people sort of begs the question what do you think Andrew yang of the other groups who don't have as many doctors right so again I will take Andrew Yang's leadership on this topic and I'm not going to suggest that you or anybody else should have a negative piñon for him for what I think was maybe a small blind spot about how that sounds when he says it now I don't I don't request an apology not needed I don't I don't even request in a clarification but it would be useful to him to know how that sounds to everybody all right it's just a useful useful feedback the other thing he said and I don't remember the exact details but there was a while ago early in the process the yang made a comment that the the rhetoric in this country was heating up to the point where it might be unsafe to be an Asian American in this country specifically chinese-american because the magda people the Republicans were going hard at China the country and some of that might spill back onto Americans we have you know some kind of Chinese connection Chinese background now he's not wrong that that's a risk but that too feels somebody says be a freakin man Scott well that's a block if you had a point instead of saying be a freakin man Scott I would listen to that point but if you have nothing but personal insults you are not welcome here goodbye so oh so you're saying that basically the the conservatives and the Republicans might be coming for the Chinese Americans because they would get all whipped up about China the country and maybe some of that would spill over I took that as a little bit racist because not against me but it was a little bit racist because it kind of assumed there was something about the group presumably the mostly white Republican types were Trump supporters and that they were somehow a little extra dangerous to the group he would identify with I feel like that's a little unfair it's a little unfair now again Andrew Yang's not a racist none of the Democrats our Trump is not in their hands they're not but you can say and do things that people go and to me that was a little little flag that I said mm that doesn't sound quite as open-minded as I would like so that's my little advice to Andrew yang he's you know I'm in favor of jokes and I'm in favor of being accurate and his his description of the risk I think was accurate but it doesn't sound right you know maybe word that a little bit differently somehow anyway the the net of this is I think thought was very productive so thank you to Andrew yang for being a leader in a similar way that President Trump is with is railing against political correctness and of course the way Trump does it is completely different than weighing Andrew yang is doing it but they're doing the same thing I mean Trump's message is let's not get caught up in the little stuff right let's let's just think past this we're all Americans we don't have to be at each other so here's an update on the Houthis I'll take your your advice on pronunciation I used to think it was the who teased the ethnic group in Yemen that is alleged to be not alleged but they're aligned with Iran they're supported by Iran and they did an attack with drones on an oil production facility in Saudi Arabians senator blaze here's the update of that story is it Houthis who these whatever it is somebody smart made the fault on Twitter I wish I knew who was made the following observation that if the Houthis were really trying to hurt Saudi Arabia they would have gone after the desalinization plants which apparently would be equally attackable but if you attack the desalinization you would really mess with the whole country whereas if you attack an oil resource well it's sort of the people who own that oil facility as a little inconvenient it didn't even change the parallel I don't even think it changed the price of oil worldwide it was any inconvenience but if you attack the desalinization plants you would you would really be delivering a pretty devastating blow to Saudi Arabia and they would survive I mean they have money they can ship in water they can figure it out but that would be a real attack now ask yourself do the Houthis know that well probably if they were smart enough to put together a whole of drone swarm attack against an oil refinery from a separate country with Iran's help of course they know well of course they know that the better target equally valid would have been the water the water facilities why do you think they didn't attack the water facilities why do you think that here's my speculation that people who are trying to influence a political outcome don't want to push the other side too far how would you feel if let's say you know the Hootie's Houthis attacked the oil field let's say you hear the Saudi Arabia went in and wiped them all out just just went in hard and just just decimated the not decimated but worse you know they let's say there was seven times a decimation they just like laid waste to the entire ethnic community and just you know bomb cities and took them out you would say that's an overreaction right and Saudi Arabia would be in a lot of trouble internationally it would hurt them they couldn't go that brutal as brutal as they are and you have to assume is plenty brutal already but they couldn't just go wipe out the houthis like the the world community wouldn't allow that to happen if it's the only thing that the houthis done that attacked it in oil production facility but what if they took out what if they who needs took out their water I'm just speaking for myself now if I heard that somebody took out the water in my country I would support complete eradication now that's too strong a statement not complete eradication I would I would literally turn around and I would never need I would never read another news story about what our military was doing to that other entity I would lose all empathy completely to me it would be a similar to a nuclear attack I I would support so this is just a sort of a psychological you know thought experiment if you're a Saudi and you hear somebody attack your oil refinery you're mad you want to do something you want to have a response but it's gonna be a proportion if you hear they took out your desalinization plants you take over Yemen wouldn't you you would actually just invade Yemen you would lock up all the people who who could find a drone anyway I mean you would go pretty barbaric on that so I think that's why the the better targets are held off because they're the route the response would be too strong which is a weird kind of a war isn't it a war where you're trying to not hurt the other two as badly as you could it's sort of a modern thing so there's another story in the news about Brett Kavanaugh I'm not even gonna repeat it at some allegation of high school and propriety with blah blah it doesn't even matter like do you believe it anyway I mean is so uncredible so and by the way I remind you when I say something's not it just means there's no reason to believe it doesn't mean something didn't happen or did happen just there's no reason to believe it so all this this Cavanagh stuff feels like the stainless told repeats so think of the some of those stories that the Democrats are pushing and this gets to SE caps commentary that the Democrats are just so pathetic right now it's starting to get sad so if they're talking about Brett Kavanaugh still and and made-up stories that are obviously not going to have an impact they're obviously not going to last they're obviously not going to derail them because they're so old and they're you know hard to demonstrate anything they're still talking about impeachment and stormy Daniels are you freaking kidding me still that's what Democrats feel like is a priority do they see anything else worth working on Cavanaugh Cavanaugh and stormy Daniels they're still talking about Andrusha collusion still talking about are you kidding me they've they've completely given up at this point it feels like they're not even working on task it feels like busywork that's what it is busy work have you ever worked in a big company and it feels like you're your boss didn't have enough for you to do so they just gave you a busy work okay I count these ceiling tiles and get back to me it feels like the Democrats can't figure out anything useful to do like actually literally can't figure out anything useful to do but they have to do something because they're getting paid to do things so if you don't have anything useful to do and you're getting paid and people are watching and you got to do something you do busy work and this Kavanagh stuff and then Pietschmann stuff and stormy Daniels stuff it feels like busy work doesn't it old dad's there was an article I tweeted around from hearts pirates the the publication's Israeli publication you've probably seen in Haaretz I don't know how to pronounce it but there was an article in there about me it turned out there somebody was writing that Netanyahu is quote a master wizard who has learned from Trump to take all the attention from the news cycle so that his opponents no matter what they're saying it doesn't matter because nobody's listening to him so apparently Netanyahu is effectively absorbing the news cycle with little controversies and and Trump like statements that just make you spit in your head and then you can't think about anything else you've got to talk about what Netanyahu wants you to talk about and in that article they they cited me so you know I sit here and my like I'm literally sitting here by my little office here in California and I talked to you on periscope and I write my little books and tweet and stuff and the next thing I know I'm part of the national discussion in Israel about the talents of the prime minister there's no story there I just thought I'd mentioned that I guess I was a humble brag but congressman Matt Gaetz had a tweet in which he was suggesting Eric Prince for national security adviser if you don't know who Eric Prince's you should google his name because it's a it's a really interesting recommendation it's Eric with a K last name Prince I'm gonna try to get him on the podcast because I think he would be one of the most interesting people in the world so I've got that I'm working on that we'll see if that happens and that is all I have for today Scott do you realize that in California there is a bill to mandate adult vaccines let me give you my opinion on vaccines I haven't looked into it and I feel like I don't want to offer and opinion on it here's why so the vaccine thing is a lot in in some ways it's a lot like climate change it is somebody says Shiva knows yeah so dr.

Shiva actually just sent me sent me a tweet of his and I'm not going to retweet it I don't know if you're if you're watching dr.

Shiva but the reason not going to tweet it is because I'm not informed and I don't feel that I could become informed in other words if I thought I could just go do my own research if I thought I could do my own research and come to a good decision I suppose I do that but I don't think that I could dig into it on any level and learn enough beyond the fact that most scientists say is safe now my understanding is that president Trump's take on this is that it's not so much the individual vaccines that are the problem but the dose schedule so it's an old tweet from Trump I saw recently 2014 or something in which you were saying that you're dealing with you know a little baby or child or whatever and that if you give them all the vaccines at once that might be a lot for their body to process and so that introduces a risk that the wait for it has never been tested if you test vaccines individually which I assume is the common way to do it you can tell if that vaccine individually is good or bad or what the risk is at least you can get close to knowing that if you test 20 different vaccines you can know that all 20 of those if given in isolation is safe but where did you test all 20 of them given together where did you test any any combination of them given together here's one of those situations where Trump the non scientist is just asking a fairly basic question have you tested it see where I'm going with this Trump is asked why are we giving untested medicine to kids now you're saying you're suddenly this tested that's the whole point FDA go through the approval there's no vaccine the kid is getting in this country that hasn't been tested wrong that's just not true because it's only been tested in one context and that context is not the one it's used in so we only tested it in the context and which is not used which is just by itself the context is in combination so are there scientists who will say Scott Scott Scott what you don't understand is that we do know how things interact well enough that we can tell if you take an aspirin and vitamin C I'm just making this part up we know that's not going to be a problem and probably for a lot of things I'm guessing that would be true I'll bet they know that if you eat you know if you eat some broccoli today and you know take an antibiotic tomorrow they probably know that's not going to do anything to you because broccoli is good they've tested the antibiotic but they haven't tested the combinations and and to the extents that some of these vaccines have common elements so there might being you know something in the mix of each one there might be common to one or more have you doubled the amount of just that one component simply because you gave it all at the same time now that's why I do not have an informed opinion if a scientist said to me Scott Scott it's a good question but we do have a good handle on that and and we have also tested how the vaccines perform as a group so we have plenty of testing that even when they're given as a group works out fine maybe so I just don't feel that I'm qualified for this conversation and I don't know that I could get there and so I don't feel that I can add something of value except maybe describing the way you hadn't heard before so that's so that's that and that is I think the last thing I wanted to talk about today somebody says vaping was safe - well the vaping problems seem to be related to illegal non you know I guess black-market devices somebody says don't drink drink alcohol and take tylenol well I don't know about any of that stuff and by the way this is why I I made a big point about lifestyle medical records wouldn't you love to know that all the people who have done the things similar to whatever you're doing like what their outcome was because you know you might say well because even vaccines you could find out I'm just gonna give you a hypothetical let's say all the people who took the vaccines and had later at some kind of a problem that may or may not have been involved with the vaccine itself what if all the people who had problems were also let's say drinkers of alcohol or they all had some other common medical condition you could find that if you had a database of enough information you could say oh yes there is a situation in which the vaccines taken as a combination could be dangerous and that is only in the case where the person's lifestyle includes this other I know dietary or lifestyle or exposure or something be good to know this I saw a number of people asking me about Jack Dorsey and we will he has agreed to be on the on the new periscope we're just trying to schedule as you might imagine Jack Dorsey's kind of busy running two gigantic companies so but he has agreed to come on which is have to fake Pickett on all right and I will talked to you later

[Music]

hello everybody come on in it's the

weekend well it's been the weekend but

it still the weekend is a great great

day so sore today when you just want to

take a deep breath take stock of all the

good stuff but most importantly you want

to enjoy the simultaneous scent because

when you do that it nearly guarantees

that the rest of your day will be better

than it would have been does it take

much to enjoy it no it does not

thanks for asking it doesn't take much

at all thanks for the super art the

virus Joe here's what you need to enjoy

the simultaneous simple I think you know

it's a cover above your glasses time to

tell us the Tegrity thermos can't eat a

Grail a vessel of any kind fill it with

your favorite liquid I'm partial to

coffee and join me now for the

simultaneous sip the best set of the day

dopamine go sublime alright let's talk

about Joe Biden here's an interesting

angle that I don't believe I've seen

anywhere so I should be the first person

to introduce this idea but it might

catch on here's the idea imagine if you

will Joe Biden gets the nomination

that's not crazy

now I've predicted it won't happen

because I predicted that he'll fail

before the before it gets time to

nominate and probably for some health or

mental stability reasons the stabilities

wrong word he's he's obviously lost a

step all the Democrats can see it it's

no longer a question of opinion you know

it's it's now passed for an opinion into

oh yeah we see it too but it's hard to

talk him out of it because apparently

there's nobody who has any influence who

can apparently there's nobody who can

talk to Biden and say you know you've

been good for the country you know maybe

take a step back so what happens if

Biden gets the nomination here's the fun

part he's gonna have to pick a vice

president let's do a little bit of

thought experiment let's say he picks a

vice president from among the other

contenders for president which would be

quite reasonable quite normal he's not

limited to that of course but it let's

say he does who would he pick wait for

it wait for it who would he pick who

would have the most chance of invoking

the 25th amendment with in conjunction

with the regular processes for that who

would support it maybe even promote it

and take the job of prog president think

about it if you voted for a Biden Carla

Harris ticket I see most of you were

getting ahead of me if if you voted for

that ticket let's say you know the

variables just lined up and against all

odds Biden gets the nomination largely

because let's say the country isn't

paying attention anybody who's watched

him in a debate it's gonna have a real

problem we're thinking that that's a

safe thing to do for the country but if

there's any doubt in people's minds

about whether Biden will be capable and

they still want the benefit of thinking

incorrectly but thinking that Biden

could be too Trump they might have this

tough question which is it's obvious

he's not capable but what if there's a

hot backup and here's here's the thing

about Harris imagine a vice presidential

pick that you could more easily imagine

invoking a fairly

radical solution the 25th amendment now

I don't think it'd be radical in this

case just because it would be quite cold

for I think but I feel like Harris

because she's a hard-ass by reputation

and because she's obviously ambitious

you know I guess they're all ambitious

but she's also a prosecutor if I were to

pick one personality type who would be

willing to let's say overlook not

overlook let's say who would be

intellectually capable of sidelining

loyalty I'm trying to say this is more a

positive way not to make it negative

someone who who has the critical

thinking and experience and mental

mindset of a prosecutor can put aside

feelings

for some you know greater process you

know legal purposes and as sort of what

she does so I would think that a

prosecutor would be the best choice to

be expected to be aggressive in acting

quickly if there was a confidence

problem with the president so we might

see that happened and it would be a not

impossible way for Harris to become

president there's there's a interesting

example of loser think in the news I

like to call out now let me define loser

thing for you but it's the title in my

new book coming out November 5th I'll

give you a little preview with the theme

is the theme is that people who have

experience across various different

fields of study be they history

psychology economics business technology

engineering whatever the fields are the

people who have a broader experience at

least in the thinking styles not all the

details not all the skills of those

different disciplines but if you've been

exposed to the way they think you're way

ahead and understanding your world and

communicating well

I'll give you a trivial example if you

had if you had never heard of science

would it ever occur to you that you

should do controlled experiments and you

know double blinds and stuff like that

probably not right because those things

were not obvious until who wasn't Newton

Isaac Newton I think was sort of the you

know the the thought founder of a lot of

science you can help me with the details

but the point is throughout much of

human history it wasn't obvious that you

needed a controlled experiment and then

you could rigorously test your way to

something good now think how think how

handicapped you'd be if you were a

modern you know person in the modern

world and you never heard a science now

you don't have to be a scientist to know

that controlled experiments make sense

there was reason to explain alright so

I'm gonna take that concept and gonna

apply it to a conversation between sort

of a public conversation I guess Bill

Maher

who did some who did a monologue in

favor of fat shaming in other words his

point was we should shame people to lose

weight because of the health benefits

economic benefits use societal benefits

so James Corden who I think you know him

from whichever late night show he's on

he's got a very impressive impressive

body work and in the entertainment

industry so so the first thing I'm gonna

say about James Corden is very

successful

I'm guessing very smart because if you

look at the body of his work it's pretty

broad in the entertainment industry it's

very impressive but I checked to see

what his educational background is and

it's not science it's not engineering

it's not economics it's not business

now if somebody had did not have an

educational background than those things

one should expect that they don't maybe

have a full grasp if they haven't been

exposed to those things of what to do

exactly in every situation because those

are pretty useful fields so let me give

you an example of what James Corden said

no apparently James Corden has been

struggling with his own weight for years

I had to look at a picture of him to see

what he was talking about and I don't

know maybe it's because he works in LA

but he doesn't look fat to me I don't

know what he's talking about

now I get that James Corden seems to

have some genes that make him a little

rounder maybe maybe old fat you know

more strongly than other people so

anyway the point is James Corden

believes he's overweight so that's his

self assessment I don't really see it in

the pictures in any way that would be in

any way I would call fat in America you

know by American standards certainly not

but he'll is probably lives and works in

LA so it probably feels like that to him

and I imagine it's going up and down

over time but here's what he said so

James Corden said this quote if making

fun of fat people made them lose weight

there'd be no fat kids in school and I'd

have a six-pack right now now in this

mode he was trying to make a serious

point he wasn't making jokes now if it

were a joke I wouldn't say well let's

look at look at him factually you know

pull it apart and see if it makes sense

but but it wasn't a joke he said it in

you know sort of an interesting way but

it's as serious it's obviously a serious

point in which he's saying that fat

shaming doesn't work because if it did

obviously every single kid gets fat

shamed if there's in fact so how many of

you think that's a good point

in the comments we'll do a fun little

thing is James Corden making a good

point

did that given that every kid who's

overweight gets fat shame you can

guarantee that zero zero kids who are

overweight do not get fat shamed

so we wouldn't see any fat people if it

worked right set you so I'm looking at

your comments and look at the mix a lot

of you say yes a lot of you saying no

why is it that it looks like about half

of you or yes half of you or uh now why

is it that you disagree on such a simple

question and here's my hypothesis now

this won't be true for every one of you

I'm gonna make a general statement my

hypothesis is the people who say this

makes sense on average not every single

person you could be the exception but on

average the people think that James

Corden is making sense probably have a

similar educational background this is

my speculation secondly the people who

say he does not make sense probably have

backgrounds that are more like economics

probably more like business maybe more

like engineering maybe more like science

or at least I've been exposed to enough

of those things that they they know how

those fields think here's what's wrong

with James Corden sentence and I'll read

it again and then tell you why it's

completely irrational okay if making fun

of fat people made them lose weight

there'd be no fat kids in school here's

what's wrong with us and half of you

already know it the other half are going

to learn it for the first time we don't

know what would have happened if this

were a controlled experiment see you see

what we see where this is going if this

were a controlled experiment we might

learn that 90% of people who are

efficient go ahead and lose weight we

might find that 10% do but the thing we

don't know is what would happen if we

did the experiment so when and let me

say I should throw my opinion in here

just so I don't get lumped in with one

of the two opinions I'm talking about my

opinion is closer to James Corden's

opinion that the fat shaming

[Music]

is not good for society I just have

different reasons for it

so I'm anti fat shaming but his reason

he gave is that if fat shaming it worked

there wouldn't be any fat kids in school

and that is a very sort of an artist

opinion if all of your education was in

the arts you wouldn't know that there

was anything wrong with that opinion if

you were a scientist that everyone here

who had a scientific background sent up

no controlled experiment no controlled

experiment your statement is absolutely

just a guess and half of you took that

statement which is nothing more than a

speculative cast and said oh yeah that's

true there would be no fat kids if if

fat shaming worked I guess that would

take care of it all so here's the the

big picture the big picture is if you'd

been exposed to the some of the other

more productive fields the way they

think you don't have to be expert in any

of them but if you just knew whether the

fact they think you would have picked

this up immediately enough on that

there's a funny funny tweet by President

Trump I forget who he was tweeting at

but there was somebody on Twitter who

was slightly notable who said in effect

that she wouldn't want to be friends

with President Trump but you know would

vote for him for president as opposed to

Andrew yang who she thinks she could be

friends with but wouldn't vote for him

for president and president Trump wisely

and entertainingly tweeted back to her

I'm good with that

here with an exclamation Lord in other

words he was accepting that he would

rather be an effective president than to

be the president everybody likes for his

personality and I thought I thought it

was a sort of a brilliantly persuasive

tweet in terms of framing the public's

opinion of the situation because the

most productive frame that this

president could put out there imagine

this imagine if President Trump could

sell what I'm gonna say next good and

that's the first time I've seen him

hinted and here's the sale I'm not

asking you to like me personally I get

it I don't want you asked to like me

personally sometimes I'm kind of a dick

but I'm gonna be a dick for you

sometimes I'm kind of a bully but I work

for you now

I'm your bully I'm bullying you're an

I'm gonna I'm gonna bully some other

countries I'm gonna bully the Democrats

I'm here I'm your bully that message is

super appealing because people want to

you see that most of president Trump's

critics have this problem that they

can't get past who he is and they don't

want to validate that and they don't

want to normalize it by the president

giving this framework which is yeah I'm

not I'm not gonna be your best friend I

could see why you wouldn't like me my

personality isn't for everybody I get it

and you're fine and I'm fine with that

at the same time let me do this

effective job look at my statistics look

at unemployment rates etc I'm doing a

good job that is a really really

productive frame because it gives it

gives a fake because to the people who

are on the fence about him the fake

because if it's a term I made up and it

has to do with the fact that we know

scientifically people often need excuses

a public excuse to do the thing they in

their mind they want to do so the people

who might want to support him but they

know that associating their vote and

their reputation with him would make

them feel like his whatever they feel

about his personality and that could be

bad so if you allowed Democrats to say

god I I just can't stand the guy but I

like a good economy then it gives them a

fake because a reason to do the thing in

public that they want to do to privately

because privately they might be thinking

to themselves I would actually vote for

that guy if it weren't so embarrassing

because of the way he acts and you know

I don't want to promote that and

normalize it

so it was a small tweet that you

probably thought was just a joke you

know just a nothing that went by but

everything he does on Twitter whether

he's thinking about this way or it just

works out that way is a/b test he puts

out a lot of stuff and they see how

people respond and that message I

thought was an excellent test an

excellent a B test just to see if that

idea could be maybe pushed a little

further I'm not sure what kind of

response he got there's another story

about a Swiss company that built a very

impressive high-end house entirely by

robots now when you hear that you say I

know the robots are taking over and and

ultimately they will of course new new

home construction will be robots

it's just when certainly if you're

looking at 20 years

totally most new construction will be

mostly robots I would say that's a safe

very safe prediction in 20 years now if

you say in five years I think you might

see your first permitted robot built

house maybe in ten years it's probably

going to be competing with humans and

twenty humans won't be competitive

anymore except for for what do you call

it reconstruction were upgrades upgrades

will still be human for a long time

because there's too many decisions being

made unless it just becomes cheaper to

tear everything down so here's the thing

one of the biggest trends that the

public doesn't see coming is is new home

building systems and technologies so I'm

saying systems to include all the

planning organizing coordinating stuff

in just the order in which you do things

and how you integrate things all that

those are systems then the technology is

robots or 3d printing or homes that you

can put together like a kit

or somebody mentioned something called

hempcrete today get rid of that it's

hemp and creates like concrete book with

hemp apparently if you use hemp and some

kind of lie or limestone mixture you get

this lightweight brick for a building

it's not strong enough for four

foundations but it's strong enough for

walls and has the advantage that the

hemp absorbed a bunch of co2 so you have

buildings that instead of concrete so

concrete will produce co2 by hempcrete

because you're growing plants and then

turning that into concrete you're

actually absorbing co2 and you're

locking it into the construction

material and you're putting in your

frickin wall and apparently has great

qualities for moisture control and

insulation so it's light which makes it

easier it insulates as a good moisture

control qualities and it and it actually

absorbs co2 I mean when it's when the

substance is growing not when you put it

in your house so now I'm not saying that

a hemp accrete will ever be a big thing

so because you know who knows there

might be other variables I don't know

about but if you look collectively at

all the things that are happening in the

construction world it it's it's a

revolution of a thousand droplets of

water that are this giant tsunami and

that this giant tsunami of you know just

a whole bunch of different little things

that are being tested and tried all over

the world if the world of constructing

things fundamentally changes it will

lower the cost of living it will make

living in some places economical when it

wasn't

you could build entire communities just

for people with drug addiction take them

out of a place where they can get drugs

put them where they just can't get them

and have a whole nice City there that

you can live in it's just a drug free

city so suddenly a whole bunch of

societal problems can be more easily

dealt with

simply by changing your construction now

what about the robots taking all the

jobs that's a mixed bag because there

are two trends and we don't know how

they'll still net out one trend is that

if robot takes you job you got to go get

another job and maybe you don't make as

much money so that's bad week we could

assume that there's some of that coming

toward us so robots taking construction

jobs guarantee there's some of that

comment but what if the net effect of

these new technologies for building

homes takes the cost of a really good

quality home down to wait for it $75,000

let's say you could buy a really livable

I'll say livable because it's designed

to be really nice just low cost so you

could have a really liveable affordable

$75,000 house even if you're paying rent

the rent on a $75,000 house is could it

be pretty low so if you could get to

that point suddenly you can you know

have a lower end job and have a real

high-quality life because you'd go home

to a you know beautiful albeit

inexpensive home all right oh I say the

home is beautiful I mean you have to

design the entire community so that it's

the community that makes the living

experience good similar to how college

is awesome if you go to college

your physical room is just as crappy a

little space you share whether your

roommate usually but the lifestyle is

amazing because you walk out of your

room and soul students and activities

and you know there's central places you

can go to have sports and all kinds of

things all right I had a realization the

other day about why the fine people hoax

is so sticky and this would be a good

just as a lesson in persuasion and how

the brain works I want to add this I

know most of you are too much about it

so I'll give you all the whole

background of the fine people hoax but

it has to do with the fact that some

large percentage of the country still

believes the President Trump called the

neo not

he's in charlottesville quote fine

people now that never happened and since

it never happened and as clearly it

never happened on the transcript clearly

it never happened and when you look at

the original video without it being

selectively edited which is a problem so

why is that the people are so sprung

loaded spring loaded to believe this

thing that is so easily debunked and now

one reason is of course that the fake

news shows the misleading edit so the

country has been lied to right so

somebody says my own ears

I'm talking to you so whoever said

whichever ones of you who are saying

right now Scott it's not a hoax I heard

it me personally with my own ears I

watched it Scott you I don't know what's

wrong with you Scott I literally watched

it myself

I thought so I'm talking to you the

people who were saying that right now

and I know there are a number of you on

this periscope here's the thing that I

realized as to why you think that thing

because you're wrong it didn't happen

and you can prove it just look at the

transcript just look at the the full

video that goes all the way to the part

where he says and I'm not talking about

the neo-nazis and white Nationals so you

have to get to that sentence in the clip

to know that he was explicitly and

without being prompted and without

asking he said I'm not talking about the

neo-nazis right so why do people believe

it here's my insight I think people are

conflating two events all right

the first event is a real event this so

the next thing I'm going to say actually

did happen that when the event first

happened and the the woman was killed by

the neo-nazi in the car and Trump was

talking about it after he did say so

this part's true there are bad people on

both sides now here's the realization

back when Trump first said that what did

the public say when he said they're bad

people on both sides if you remember

everybody said what the hell are you

talking about one side was literally

neo-nazis like not that's not our

opinion they were literally neo-nazis

who organized with torches and and one

of them killed somebody so how in the

world can you say that the people who

are protesting them are the bad people

as the people who are the bad people you

know the actual racist how in the world

can President Trump say that so that was

the first controversy I remember he said

that at a time when the public didn't

know much about antiphon what they knew

about Anti Fog is that they were

protesting the racists say you say to

yourself there's no way this is a moral

equivalent president Trump you're

totally wrong

protesting races is not morally

equivalent to being racist duh

right time goes by what do we find out

about antiphon meaning we the public at

large what do we learn about antiphon in

the time that has passed as son

Charlottesville what we learned is that

the president was 100% right there were

bad people on both sides an tyfa as of

course like you know any large

organization a lot of different

personalities and I'm sure there are

there are good people

we joined anti far for all the right

reasons in their mind at least they

think it's some greater good but we do

know no now and it's unambiguous it's

something that both sides of the

political world would accept the

anti-fog wears costumes and brings

weapons and looks for violence and that

they've attacked people from behind now

again not every anti phone number is

violent we all acknowledge that but as

an organization they have some bad

people now that wasn't obvious to the

public at large when President

but first said there are bad people on

both sides so the very first thing that

happened was people said wait you're

you're acting like both sides are

somehow morally equivalent this is the

new insight I had that the first

incident in which we now know President

Trump was a hundred percent correct I

mean we're actually considering

designating anti far as domestic

terrorists if you're even in that

conversation you've got some bad people

in your group right so so that part's

true

and I think that gets conflated in

people's minds when that a separate

separate time in a separate event and

but soon after President Trump said

there were quote fine people on both

sides now when he said they were fine

people on both sides the context was

different in that case he defined his

terms and that's the part that gets

edited out of the videos so if you

haven't seen the full video you were

intentionally being hoaxed basically by

the media because they've left out the

context intentionally now the context is

the president very clearly and

explicitly said I'm not talking he said

this actual sentence this is his actual

sentence I'm not talking about the white

nationalists and the neo-nazis they

should be condemned it totally as clear

as you could possibly be and then he

explained to who he was talking about

was people who had showed up on both

sides of the question of whether the

statue should stay or whether it's

offensive and should leave and his

argument is that they were fine people

who could disagree on the statue

who have nothing to do with the people

who are marching with the tiki torches

now whenever I point this out to people

and so here's the insight the insight is

that the original statement of bad

people on both sides seemed untrue when

he said it but over time we now know it

was true completely true bad people on

both sides just not all of them that

there were bad people there and now we

also and then that gets conflated with

the fine people on both sides and then

people forget that that context was

about the

non-racist protesters and they he

defined his terms very clearly so that's

my insight I think that what makes this

special is not just the fake news not

just the fact that the people primed to

believe it our prime to believe it

those those would be enough but when you

add those two events that are similar

enough that your brain conflates them

automatically I mean even when I

described it to you it was it was you

probably had a thought of right I got to

pay attention because it's a little hard

to follow and that's what makes it so

sticky that bad people on both sides and

find people on both sides got conflated

in your mind so those of you who are on

this periscope who said when I started

that so that was wrong how do you feel

right now

now that you've actually heard the the

explanation and I would invite you to

look at the hash tag hash tag find

people hoaxes and you can see some stuff

on Twitter that will lead you to the

actual transcript and the actual videos

and it's gonna blow your mind it's gonna

blow your mind to learn how badly you

were wrong about one of the most basic

stories of our reality all right so

enough on that I saw SE Cupp who's what

would you call her and I know analyst

pundit host I don't know what title she

has on CNN I think she was allegedly

Republican ish but sort of is anti Trump

ish so she's more of a she's sort of

leaving left at the moment for CNN I

don't know her whole story

commentator somebody says let's call her

a commentator if she did a very good

piece about how the Democrats are almost

not even trying to win

and I thought it was really well done

even with her her facial gestures so if

you get a chance to see that s SE Cupp

little video clip it's pretty short

which he goes through how the Democrats

are so incompetent the group of them

that it's almost as if not almost is

this it looks like not literally but it

you know just on the surface it looks

like they're trying to lose it's so bad

but it's a really good piece all right

see what else we got going on Kyle bass

investor Kyle bass who seems to be one

of the strongest voices against doing

business with China at all tweeted today

that apparently and he seems credible

enough that I believe this is true but

like everything that I hear I always go

at it with a little bit of skepticism

the claim is that the Chinese telecom

company has some nodes in America in

other words some American companies have

at some point bought Chinese technology

for switches or routers or whatever and

put it in put it in the network in the

United States proper but that that has

allowed China to look at our traffic now

I don't know is that true

apparently some of the traffic is being

routed from the United States to China

so they can look at it if they wanna if

that's true and Kyle Bass is saying that

we have to like take that equipment out

of the country if if it's even a little

bit true that the Chinese equipment

might be sending our our private traffic

over to China so they can take a look at

it we have to change that tomorrow

that's not even the next week anything

is it isn't that sort of you've got to

go to those telecom companies the

President of the United States or

whatever agency needs to say you've got

it you've got to tell your customers

that there

that their traffic is not private from

China and you've got to get rid of that

so yesterday I was talking to a

international business person so I'll

tell this story without the details

because the international business

person is listening to this is going to

be having the simultaneous up on his

commute so without naming names somebody

told me that he recently went to China

and and the result of a short business

trip to China is that his laptop was so

infected with with presumably you know

hacks from official or unofficial

Chinese sources that his tech people are

telling him to grind it up it is so

infected and so dangerous to even go

into China and use their Wi-Fi in a

hotel that his his laptop is almost

unfixable corrupted by spyware so that

he's actually gonna have to take it out

and like you know run out run it through

a shredder or something so just think

about that think about China is so

unreliable as a as a business partner

you can't even visit think about the

fact you can't even visit the country

unless you have either no technology or

you get a some kind of a VPN or

something I think if you have a VPN

you're in good shape all right Andrew

Yang's making news with a little public

dust-up with a comedian whose last name

is Gilles who apparently is going to be

a new member of Saturday Night Live

starting the season and of course the

moment he was announced to get the job

somebody dug into his past and found

some racially offensive things he said

allegedly in the service of humor that's

the debatable part and so what he said

what Gilles said was it looked like some

kind of a podcast II situation he was

talking with another person

and he used the the the asian n-word it

starts with a c alright I'm not even

used to work so if you're if you're

asian-american and somebody uses a

slurry you the starts with the letter C

you probably know what I'm talking about

ch let's make it easier starts with the

words CH third word is I third letter is

I just in case you're not getting there

quickly enough so I'm not going to say

the word because I find that quite

offensive and I mean offensive on behalf

of other people nothing offends me

personally but I I would be supportive

of other people being offended when they

heard that word so he uses that word and

of course it becomes you know social

media starts spreading around and then

Andrew yang weighs in and he said to do

oh he he basically he gave a soft rebuke

so he he andrew yang basically because

he said you know something was soft but

sort of you know pushing back a little

bit doesn't matter the exact words he

said he'd be happy to talk to him about

it so he said he'd be happy to sit down

and and talk to Gilles about it

and then of course there were calls for

Gilles to be fired for being a racist

and then yang Wei didn't again and

here's the interesting part of the story

all right yang weighs in with the second

tweet and he said quote we would benefit

from being more forgiving rather than

punitive meaning that punitive punitive

punitive isn't worth punitive let's say

so here's so here's the summary Gillis

says something that's offensive to

asian-americans and anybody from has the

Asian background and yang pushes back

but softly there's a call for Gilles

lose his job and then yang comes in and

says now maybe we'd benefit from being

more forgiving rather than punitive I

love that

honestly that

in my mind the front-runner on the

Democrat side he's like the only person

who seems to understand Otto

consistently he seems the only one who

understands how incentives work have you

noticed that now you could argue that

with the ubi he's giving incentives

wrong because hey why would you pay

people to not work but I think he's just

ahead of the curve on that meaning that

we're not going to have an option about

paying people directly once the robots

take the job so it's not so much that

yang doesn't understand that paying

people to not work can have effect on

their incentives of course he

understands that but that we might not

have a choice which is actually a pretty

forward-thinking thing to say so

my view on Yang of course is forming

over time and you know at this point I

still don't see him as a threat to get

the nomination but based on this on this

one interaction alone for yang to say

publicly I think maybe we should ease up

on some of this stuff from a Democrat

now any Republican would have sent this

right yeah don't you imagine it would

have been easy for endemic in say a

let's let's ease off on the political

correctness but this wasn't even the

case of political correctness per se it

looked like it was the real deal and for

yang to go soft on that and to recommend

that maybe we should think in those

terms is a real gamechanger I think and

I think it's like an important it's an

important addition to the public

conversation so I would like to thank

you Andrew yang for doing the public

service so without even being elected I

would say this is a valuable literally a

valuable public service that he would

introduce this more productive way of

thinking I would call it so this is

productive thinking now I can't tell

this story without giving my complaints

about Yang being a little racist himself

now when I say yang is racing

I'm using the term to talk about the the

impact of someone's actions not their

inner thoughts I do not believe yang is

a racist in his inner mind I don't think

Biden is I don't think Trump is I don't

think people at that level or actual

racist internally but it is certainly

true that the impact of your decisions

can you know the impact of your

statements that your choice of words can

make people feel bad can have racial

consequences etc so that parts all true

but I don't think Yang's inner thoughts

are racist so two problems I have with

that one you saw the debates he joked

yang did he said quote I'm Asian so I

know a lot of doctors it's kind of

racist isn't it now again I'm not saying

in his mind he's racist he's just making

a joke and I would follow his own advice

that maybe we should benefit from being

more forgiving than Putin's punitive all

right so I don't think that yang should

be punished for a joke but here's the

thing he should be a little bit more

aware of and I think this is always

worth noting it's a stereotype that's

positive and so he's probably thinking

that's just a positive stereotype and

I'm talking about my own people I'm safe

right but what would you feel like if

you're not Asian if you're not

asian-american in particular how would

you take that comment it feels a little

like my people are better than your

people doesn't it is that is that sort

of that the vibe you get from that

because since being a doctor is

considered a respectable thing that only

smart hard-working people can accomplish

saying that his group is that the group

has a lot of smart hard-working people

sort of begs the question what do you

think Andrew yang of the other groups

who don't have as many doctors right so

again I will take Andrew Yang's

leadership on this topic and I'm not

going to suggest that you or anybody

else should have a negative

piñon for him for what I think was maybe

a small blind spot about how that sounds

when he says it now I don't I don't

request an apology not needed I don't I

don't even request in a clarification

but it would be useful to him to know

how that sounds to everybody all right

it's just a useful useful feedback the

other thing he said and I don't remember

the exact details but there was a while

ago

early in the process the yang made a

comment that the the rhetoric in this

country was heating up to the point

where it might be unsafe to be an Asian

American in this country specifically

chinese-american because the magda

people the Republicans were going hard

at China the country and some of that

might spill back onto Americans we have

you know some kind of Chinese connection

Chinese background now he's not wrong

that that's a risk but that too feels

somebody says be a freakin man Scott

well that's a block if you had a point

instead of saying be a freakin man Scott

I would listen to that point but if you

have nothing but personal insults you

are not welcome here

goodbye so oh so you're saying that

basically the the conservatives and the

Republicans might be coming for the

Chinese Americans because they would get

all whipped up about China the country

and maybe some of that would spill over

I took that as a little bit racist

because not against me but it was a

little bit racist because it kind of

assumed there was something about the

group presumably the mostly white

Republican types were Trump supporters

and that they were somehow a little

extra dangerous to the group he would

identify with

I feel like that's a little unfair it's

a little unfair

now again Andrew Yang's not a racist

none of the Democrats our Trump is not

in their hands they're not but you can

say and do things that people go and to

me that was a little little flag that I

said mm that doesn't sound quite as

open-minded as I would like so that's my

little advice to Andrew yang he's you

know I'm in favor of jokes and I'm in

favor of being accurate and his his

description of the risk I think was

accurate but it doesn't sound right you

know maybe word that a little bit

differently somehow anyway the the net

of this is I think thought was very

productive so thank you to Andrew yang

for being a leader in a similar way that

President Trump is with is railing

against political correctness and of

course the way Trump does it is

completely different than weighing

Andrew yang is doing it but they're

doing the same thing I mean Trump's

message is let's not get caught up in

the little stuff right let's let's just

think past this we're all Americans we

don't have to be at each other so here's

an update on the Houthis I'll take your

your advice on pronunciation I used to

think it was the who teased the ethnic

group in Yemen that is alleged to be not

alleged but they're aligned with Iran

they're supported by Iran and they did

an attack with drones on an oil

production facility in Saudi Arabians

senator blaze here's the update of that

story is it Houthis who these whatever

it is somebody smart made the fault on

Twitter I wish I knew who was made the

following observation that if the

Houthis were really trying to hurt Saudi

Arabia they would have gone after the

desalinization plants

which apparently would be equally

attackable but if you attack the

desalinization you would really mess

with the whole country whereas if you

attack an oil resource well it's sort of

the people who own that oil facility as

a little inconvenient it didn't even

change the parallel I don't even think

it changed the price of oil worldwide it

was any inconvenience but if you attack

the desalinization plants you would you

would really be delivering a pretty

devastating blow to Saudi Arabia and

they would survive I mean they have

money they can ship in water they can

figure it out but that would be a real

attack now ask yourself do the Houthis

know that well probably if they were

smart enough to put together a whole of

drone swarm attack against an oil

refinery from a separate country with

Iran's help of course they know well of

course they know that the better target

equally valid would have been the water

the water facilities why do you think

they didn't attack the water facilities

why do you think that here's my

speculation that people who are trying

to influence a political outcome don't

want to push the other side too far how

would you feel if let's say you know the

Hootie's Houthis attacked the oil field

let's say you hear the Saudi Arabia went

in and wiped them all out just just went

in hard and just just decimated the not

decimated but worse you know they let's

say there was seven times a decimation

they just like laid waste to the entire

ethnic community and just you know bomb

cities and took them out you would say

that's an overreaction right and Saudi

Arabia would be in a lot of trouble

internationally it would hurt them they

couldn't go that brutal as brutal as

they are and you have to assume is

plenty brutal already

but they couldn't just go wipe out the

houthis like the the world community

wouldn't allow that to happen if it's

the only thing that the houthis done

that attacked it in oil production

facility but what if they took out what

if they who needs took out their water

I'm just speaking for myself now if I

heard that somebody took out the water

in my country I would support complete

eradication now that's too strong a

statement not complete eradication I

would I would literally turn around and

I would never need I would never read

another news story about what our

military was doing to that other entity

I would lose all empathy completely to

me it would be a similar to a nuclear

attack I I would support so this is just

a sort of a psychological you know

thought experiment if you're a Saudi and

you hear somebody attack your oil

refinery you're mad you want to do

something you want to have a response

but it's gonna be a proportion if you

hear they took out your desalinization

plants you take over Yemen wouldn't you

you would actually just invade Yemen you

would lock up all the people who who

could find a drone anyway I mean you

would go pretty barbaric on that so I

think that's why the the better targets

are held off because they're the route

the response would be too strong which

is a weird kind of a war isn't it a war

where you're trying to not hurt the

other two as badly as you could it's

sort of a modern thing so there's

another story in the news about Brett

Kavanaugh I'm not even gonna repeat it

at some allegation of high school and

propriety with blah blah it doesn't even

matter like do you believe it anyway I

mean is so uncredible so and by the way

I remind you when I say something's not

it just means there's no reason to

believe it doesn't mean something didn't

happen or did happen just there's no

reason to believe it

so all this this Cavanagh stuff feels

like the stainless told repeats so think

of the some of those stories that the

Democrats are pushing and this gets to

SE caps commentary that the Democrats

are just so pathetic right now it's

starting to get sad so if they're

talking about Brett Kavanaugh still and

and made-up stories that are obviously

not going to have an impact they're

obviously not going to last they're

obviously not going to derail them

because they're so old and they're you

know hard to demonstrate anything

they're still talking about impeachment

and stormy Daniels are you freaking

kidding me

still that's what Democrats feel like is

a priority do they see anything else

worth working on Cavanaugh Cavanaugh and

stormy Daniels they're still talking

about Andrusha collusion still talking

about are you kidding me they've they've

completely given up at this point it

feels like they're not even working on

task it feels like busywork that's what

it is busy work

have you ever worked in a big company

and it feels like you're your boss

didn't have enough for you to do so they

just gave you a busy work okay I count

these ceiling tiles and get back to me

it feels like the Democrats can't figure

out anything useful to do like actually

literally can't figure out anything

useful to do but they have to do

something because they're getting paid

to do things so if you don't have

anything useful to do and you're getting

paid and people are watching and you got

to do something you do busy work and

this Kavanagh stuff and then Pietschmann

stuff and stormy Daniels stuff it feels

like busy work doesn't it old dad's

there was an article I tweeted around

from hearts pirates the

the publication's Israeli publication

you've probably seen in Haaretz I don't

know how to pronounce it but there was

an article in there about me it turned

out there somebody was writing that

Netanyahu is quote a master wizard who

has learned from Trump to take all the

attention from the news cycle so that

his opponents no matter what they're

saying it doesn't matter because

nobody's listening to him

so apparently Netanyahu is effectively

absorbing the news cycle with little

controversies and and Trump like

statements that just make you spit in

your head and then you can't think about

anything else you've got to talk about

what Netanyahu wants you to talk about

and in that article they they cited me

so you know I sit here and my like I'm

literally sitting here by my little

office here in California and I talked

to you on periscope and I write my

little books and tweet and stuff and the

next thing I know I'm part of the

national discussion in Israel about the

talents of the prime minister there's no

story there I just thought I'd mentioned

that I guess I was a humble brag but

congressman Matt Gaetz had a tweet in

which he was suggesting Eric Prince for

national security adviser if you don't

know who Eric Prince's you should google

his name because it's a it's a really

interesting recommendation it's Eric

with a K last name Prince I'm gonna try

to get him on the podcast because I

think he would be one of the most

interesting people in the world so I've

got that I'm working on that we'll see

if that happens and that is all I have

for today Scott do you realize that in

California there is a bill to mandate

adult vaccines let me give you my

opinion on vaccines I haven't looked

into it and I feel like I don't want to

offer

and opinion on it here's why so the

vaccine thing is a lot in in some ways

it's a lot like climate change it is

somebody says Shiva knows yeah so dr.

Shiva actually just sent me sent me a

tweet of his and I'm not going to

retweet it I don't know if you're if

you're watching dr. Shiva

but the reason not going to tweet it is

because I'm not informed and I don't

feel that I could become informed in

other words if I thought I could just go

do my own research if I thought I could

do my own research and come to a good

decision I suppose I do that but I don't

think that I could dig into it on any

level and learn enough beyond the fact

that most scientists say is safe now my

understanding is that president Trump's

take on this is that it's not so much

the individual vaccines that are the

problem

but the dose schedule so it's an old

tweet from Trump I saw recently 2014 or

something in which you were saying that

you're dealing with you know a little

baby or child or whatever and that if

you give them all the vaccines at once

that might be a lot for their body to

process and so that introduces a risk

that the wait for it has never been

tested if you test vaccines individually

which I assume is the common way to do

it you can tell if that vaccine

individually is good or bad or what the

risk is at least you can get close to

knowing that if you test 20 different

vaccines you can know that all 20 of

those if given in isolation is safe but

where did you test all 20 of them given

together where did you test any any

combination of them given together

here's one of those situations where

Trump the non scientist is just asking a

fairly basic question have you tested it

see where I'm going with this

Trump is asked

why are we giving untested medicine to

kids now you're saying you're suddenly

this tested that's the whole point

FDA go through the approval there's no

vaccine the kid is getting in this

country that hasn't been tested wrong

that's just not true because it's only

been tested in one context and that

context is not the one it's used in so

we only tested it in the context and

which is not used which is just by

itself the context is in combination

so are there scientists who will say

Scott Scott Scott what you don't

understand is that we do know how things

interact well enough that we can tell if

you take an aspirin and vitamin C I'm

just making this part up we know that's

not going to be a problem and probably

for a lot of things I'm guessing that

would be true I'll bet they know that if

you eat you know if you eat some

broccoli today and you know take an

antibiotic tomorrow they probably know

that's not going to do anything to you

because broccoli is good they've tested

the antibiotic but they haven't tested

the combinations and and to the extents

that some of these vaccines have common

elements so there might being you know

something in the mix of each one there

might be common to one or more have you

doubled the amount of just that one

component simply because you gave it all

at the same time now that's why I do not

have an informed opinion if a scientist

said to me Scott Scott it's a good

question but we do have a good handle on

that and and we have also tested how the

vaccines perform as a group so we have

plenty of testing that even when they're

given as a group works out fine maybe so

I just don't feel that I'm qualified for

this conversation and I don't know that

I could get there and so I don't feel

that I can add something of value except

maybe describing the way you hadn't

heard before so that's so that's that

and that is I think the last thing I

wanted to talk about today

somebody says vaping was safe - well the

vaping problems seem to be related to

illegal non you know I guess

black-market devices somebody says don't

drink drink alcohol and take tylenol

well I don't know about any of that

stuff and by the way this is why I I

made a big point about lifestyle medical

records wouldn't you love to know that

all the people who have done the things

similar to whatever you're doing like

what their outcome was because you know

you might say well because even vaccines

you could find out I'm just gonna give

you a hypothetical let's say all the

people who took the vaccines and had

later at some kind of a problem that may

or may not have been involved with the

vaccine itself what if all the people

who had problems were also let's say

drinkers of alcohol or they all had some

other common medical condition you could

find that if you had a database of

enough information you could say oh yes

there is a situation in which the

vaccines taken as a combination could be

dangerous and that is only in the case

where the person's lifestyle includes

this other I know dietary or lifestyle

or exposure or something be good to know

this I saw a number of people asking me

about Jack Dorsey and we will he has

agreed to be on the on the new periscope

we're just trying to schedule as you

might imagine Jack Dorsey's kind of busy

running two gigantic companies so but he

has agreed to come on which is have to

fake Pickett on all right and I will

talked to you later