Episode 905 Scott Adams - Swaddle in Place. Come Learn a Useful Trick With Me.

bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum do you like my exciting new introduction you get to watch the lights come on then the shades go down except one of my shades isn't working Hey get down there there we go there we go it's exciting is that sort of like a little build-up I know but back to me that's enough of that how the heck have you been I missed you spent 11 hours and somebody says does Christina still cut your hair well she's in she's in social isolation in a different house so I was going to cut my hair on on live stream today but I didn't feel like cleaning up the hair in my office so I'm not going to do that I'm not taking Twitter questions but if I see something go by all I'll take it questioned so here's what's happened since what last we spoke I saw britt hume tweeting a quote by anthony Falchi doctor foul she in which fat she was saying that he's never had much trust in models and prey hume a paraphrasing but basically britt hume said why are you telling us now because you seemed you seemed pretty confident you know not too long ago seemed pretty confident back then but now you don't trust models and here's what I find funny about that the reason for how she says he doesn't trust the models is that they're only as good as the assumptions they've put in them is that wrong is xiaochi wrong that the models are only as good as the assumptions no of course that of course now we all know that and is that the most ordinary expected thing you could ever say about models that it depends on the assumptions you put in it's just the most obvious thing so I said in a different tweet today that I would I would lose respect for any expert who believed models work any expert doesn't matter what the field is if they say these long range multi variable models work and actually can give you a photograph of the future I would not trust those experts you know what I mean but what was funniest about this is Brit Hume is probably you know one of the most you know experienced news people you know he's seen everything from every angle you know one of the sharpest you know observers of political life especially and apparently Bray Hume thought these models were actually telling you something to which I think really having you get this far and not know that long-range prediction models are not are not telling you even slightly more than you could just guess because if they could anybody who could who had that kind of superpower to predict the future even with a little bit of edge over over chance would be a trillionaire if anybody can do it somebody would do it to get rich there'd be a million ways you can exploit that to get rich so no dr.

Falchi his my opinion of dr.

vouch he just went up a level when he said he doesn't believe the models the the viola G models so that is the correct answer dr.

fetcher I see that the ex FDA had dr.

Gotlieb is saying that we should go back to work but ideally we should have widespread screening now I would like to nominate for the most useless thing that anybody can say about the corona virus is we should have widespread testing why don't we have more testing hey I've got an idea why don't we do testing you know it South Korea did some testing why don't we do some testing hey I've got an idea has anybody thought of this we could do some testing have you have you realized am I the first one to think of this that if we could test people and we could test a lot of people that would really help we'd know that who didn't Wow I'm so sick of people going on television or in the new to tell us that it would really be good if we could test if we had the tests if we could I'm pretty sure that would have been right at the top of the list that our experts would have wanted to do please stop saying we should do more testing there's nobody who disagrees with that we just can't do it so you know it would also be good to stop this pandemic magic why don't we use magic people people are you not thinking it through just use magic Oh magic isn't real well then we'll just test we'll just do massive oh we don't have massive tests they don't exist and we can't make them that fast oh all right well the good news is that there are a number of exciting developments in the world of testing now by the way I one of my best predictions I believe based on some information I had that most people didn't have is that the world of quickly testing stuff had moved way way into the future but hadn't quite been productized yet in other words there were a lot of startups who already had licensed technology from government labs that would allow you to very quickly check things you know inexpensively and accurately in the field so I'd see the number of startups try to exploit that technology so I predicted early on that you would suddenly see leaping into existence this technology because now it was an emergency so you know funding could be had and things would get ramped up quickly and just like I imagined I think you get it well I'm pretty sure you're gonna see some new stuff let's just say I get to see things before you do and there's some exciting stuff coming in that realm here's an interesting positive thought the president said something along these lines but want to extend the thought so the president was making his economic prediction that he said you know the site the second quarters you know going to be bad the third quarter maybe you could start to think about things getting better but the president thought that there was lots of pent-up demand and that the fourth quarter could be record-setting I really really like the way he puts that because he's very he's being very I'd say conservative about what would happen this corner next obviously they're not going to be great but then he gives us a pretty legitimate most optimistic case that the end of this year things would start picking up and maybe even set records because of pent-up demand yeah that could happen I mean it's just as likely that they'll be soft demand because people got crushed economically but you could see the people who didn't get crushed just stepping it up and having a little extra spending I can see that here's the part I want to add and I think that the president referred to this by you're taking the level deeper which is we've never had a time in our history where so many of us took a time out and just stopped working and sort of had time to think about things now you think to yourself well that's not a big deal I mean we we often we often take vacations and we take the weekend off it's not that big a deal that we have time to think about things but here's what's different because of the restrictions placed on all of our lives and the economic impact etc almost everybody had to rethink from the ground up everything they do you had to rethink how you eat how do you give food you had to rethink your social life you have to rethink travel you have to rethink cleaning you had to rethink shipping you had to rethink your job and every part of your job you had to think education family structure who's babysitting all of it all of it had to be rethought now here's my positive spit of this I think that that process makes people realize there's just a ton of stuff that needs to be better from you know how many people realize that they could get more work done by not commuting yeah just to pick one simple example and I've got a feeling that people saw different ways to do things they saw red tape at being cut they saw people doing things faster than they thought they saw innovation they saw people stepping up and and everybody had to rethink from scratch how can I do this job I had been doing you know what's the smarter way to do this now that meets all these different requirements and I think what's gonna happen and maybe we'll never be alone measurement but I think that there's going to be a systems innovation surge and when I say systems I mean the system of how do you travel to work the system of hada you go to school the system of you know the workplace how do you organize it and everything like that so I think people are going to fundamentally rethink all of our systems and as you know I'm the biggest proponent of making sure you've got good systems and it could be really gigantic in terms of its long-term impact simply the fact that our creativity was was challenged and this concentrated away so it'll take a while for that those benefits to work their way through the system but I think it could be really big I was trying to think of all the things that will be different after we get back to work certainly the work at home thing I I think the argument for self-driving cars it just got way stronger as I often say persuasion is not just about how good your argument is it's also about getting people's attention so the things that people think about the most they irrationally think are the important things because they're thinking about it so if you make somebody think about something a lot it will become important to them when it wasn't before so here's my point of that because a lot of attention will be put on the natural death rate of driving only because we have this weird experiment when people stop driving for a while so you can actually really see in concrete terms how many people did not die because we weren't all in traffic and I think what that's going to do is it's going to push people toward thinking wait a minute we saved I'm gonna pick a number I don't know what the real number is people are gonna save are you telling me we saved twenty five thousand lives by not driving and then we can bank that savings and always save twenty five thousand lives or for the full year maybe it's fifty thousand could we sell could we save fifty thousand lives a year just by having self-driving cars that would almost never crash I mean if he did it right they would never crash so I think the self-driving cars just went from you know something you'd like someday to my god why don't we hurry up on this cuz you could save fifty thousand lives a year that's as much as that's as much as we close down the entire economy for I think contact tracing is going to be thing did you see the story then I guess Apple and Google have decided to release I don't know some standards technical standards or an API or something but the idea is that they're making it possible to build apps where you can tell if you've been near somebody so let's say you've you were diagnosed with having coronavirus you could with a few pushes of whatever buttons on your app and maybe you don't have to allow it I don't know if you have to give permission where the government is just going to do it at some point you have to give permission so maybe you give permission you know from the hello SATs before you've been diagnosed so that your Bluetooth is telling you who you're bumping into all day who also has a bluetooth on so the idea is that you could look at the digital trail and you send people a text and say hey you stood within four to this person who has coronavirus go get a checked or something like that that could be huge you know if you were gonna make a short list of all the things they could get you back to work well one of them would be widespread testing which we can't do yet but you know maybe in a few weeks the other would be magic of course which doesn't exist so that would be great and then we have this new thing which is these apps that will do the Bluetooth contact things which doesn't exist but what imagines that in a month or so maybe we could have something like that working but all of those and maybe the hydroxyl chloroquine makes a difference maybe genetic testing will tell us something so we probably have four different ways that we could attack the virus so I think we'll get there I think education online will change completely I think the biggest thing that will change online education is the first time somebody doesn't right in my opinion has never been done right no it's now like I've seen every online course but nothing I've seen and what I mean and what I mean by doing it right is something it takes like a Hollywood movie kind of a model and they get they hire somebody who's just good on camera you know looks good talks well somebody to write the script somebody to do the graphics somebody to direct it you know so you've got like a real movie production but it's just a college course or a class and once it's done right and especially you would also do a lot of a B testing so you might test it out with small crowds before you finalized it you know to make sure that you're saying things clearly etc so to basically produce a class the way manufacturers produce any other product which is it goes through testing and research and polling you know you've got a team of experts coming together it's a long term project right now we just point a camera at somebody who knows how to teach and they just teach but the soon as somebody does it right the first time it's gonna turn into a real business and it might be I would argue all right here here's another prediction I will argue that the biggest business of the future will be online training yeah how do you like that prediction I'll say it again just so there's no there's no there's no confusion my prediction is that the biggest industry and the future the one with the most dollar amount will be online education because the courses are going to be you know colleges will eventually have to disappear because they don't really make sense you know for the price for what you're getting they just don't make any sense so I think regular colleges will you know start to fade away online education will grow and just keep getting better and I think that when people are producing imagine what you would pay just think about this imagine what you would pay to have a course that you needed let's say you needed it for your job or was part of a degree program but you could take the course that was as fun as watching the best movie you've watched like it's just really entertaining but you're also learning it at the same time how much extra would you pay for that versus the boring one that makes you want to you know take your brain out with a spoon well you would pay a lot for that you know not everybody but there would be enough people with money who would pay a lot for that training that's a little bit better and I think eventually the transmission of information and training will be the biggest market in the world that's what I think dr.

Carlson asked a question that has had me scratching my head since I heard it and I guess I did a fact check on this because there's an assumption in this or a fact that I'm not sure about but what doctor said was that outside of Wuhan there hasn't been a major break out in China there hasn't been another city China that got real problems like New York or or would and Tucker says what's up with that because we also learned that maybe the virus is even way more viral than we thought so how could it be way more viral than we thought millions of people have left Wuhan since since the worst part of the pandemic they're traveling all around is super viral and we don't have other major outbreaks in China how would you even speculate that that's possible well let's let's do that let's speculate number one is that China is lying okay that's the obvious one right the most obvious one is they're lying but if what happened in Wuhan was happening anywhere else how would we not notice is it possible that something as big as Wuhan or are a half of Wuhan you know would still be gigantic right it would still be a really big deal how would we not notice that even even with their control of the media and everything else we would know right so so one possibility is it is happening and China is like you know millions of people are dying we just don't know I guess it's possible right I guess that's one possibility here's another possibility they have a vaccine right what's the possibility that they have a vaccine well here again you have the same problem as the first example if they had a vaccine it means they would have vaccinated what hundreds of millions of people do you think there's any chance we wouldn't know if hundreds of millions of people were forcefully vaccinated in a period of a few weeks yeah we'd know that right again we don't have great visibility about everything happening China but something of that size we know right so I'm gonna rule out vaccination and I'm gonna rule out that it is actually big outbreaks everywhere because we would notice those two things here's another one suppose I see it in the comments you're a little bit ahead of me suppose hydroxychloroquine and as if the Mason and zinc work really really well and by work really well I mean well enough that it doesn't overwhelm your hospitals even if you've got an outbreak would you know would you be aware of it if a lot of regular Chinese people we're having something that was like a mild cold but they were taking their their meds and it didn't hospitalized them and they got better in a week would with the rest of the world know that that was happening on a massive scale well here again we might know because that's a lot of hydroxychloroquine if they're handing it out like candy over there - they're a billion or whatever plus people wouldn't we know that I think we know but of the three choices it's the one we would least likely know would you agree with that that if they had a vaccine they had forced hundreds of billions of people to take in a few weeks we know that if if millions of people were dying we know that but if they were giving out massive amounts of hydroxychloroquine anytime somebody showed the first signs of symptoms would we know that because let's say they only gave us the people who showed symptoms what do we know maybe not so if I had to guess I would say that would be the one that's slightly more likely or it could be some other some other of a therapeutic I'm hearing a lot of people worrying that the the crackdown and the shelter in place orders and all that are the beginning of softening us up for the ultimate dictator move we're all of our rights and freedoms are taken away from us I'm finding no sympathy for that opinion because first of all I don't think it's happening I just think we're doing what we need to for the emergency and when it's over we'll get rid of the things so there's some sense that any kind of surveillance or tracking or lack of privacy would just automatically become permanent even after we solved the problem for which they had been implemented I don't think so I don't know of all the things I'm gonna worry about this year it doesn't make my top hundred now maybe maybe I'm missing something but to me it looks like the United States is really good at tweaking things when they need to then on tweaking it when they're done no I I think that I think that you would have to have a different mindset in your public for that to be a big risk I said this before but I'll say it again which is the the great asset that Americans have is the American idea you know the idea of what is right and fair the brainwashing that we all got as kids you know to be patriotic and I say brainwashing but not in a negative way because to have a coherent society you can't they have to braid brainwash people to be on the same page culturally religiously in some cases but at least in terms of the constitution of the law so you need some brainwashing United States does it really well it's created a society a very independent you know we we could will resist at the drop of a hat so there's something about the American mind that I think really makes the whole dictatorship thing seem ridiculous but you would have to see our minds change a whole lot before you would see me getting worried but as long as our minds are good then what we're doing with the details is not the beginning of the dictator state it's just what we need to do to solve a problem right now that's what I say I asked this question about whether the deaths are being correctly characterized and added to the right categories for the coronavirus deaths especially and I got two feedbacks from ER doctors all right so I asked is there an ER doctor who can confirm the following belief so this is my belief my belief without being an ER doctor is that they probably are quite good at accurately identifying the real cause of death the I'll give you my simple examples which is if somebody had diabetes for fifteen years and they come in and they die within a day of respiratory problems and you know the classic red eyes of the coronavirus patient and you know as every sign of of coronavirus that it probably wasn't the diabetes that they've had for fifteen years like it could be but it'd just be this weird coincidence that that was the day you died so that's my simplified story but as one ER doctor explained to me that the doctors do actually look at the patient's history what's happened recently you know that the entire constellation of factors and then they decided what the cause of death is there's a whole process for doing it and at least for this one ER doctor it was his opinion that there that there are categories that they're categorizing there's probably 95% correct all right so that's that's one opinion that's somebody who assigned a lot of death certificates so this is this is coming from somebody who has personally signed hundreds of death certificates from the ER and he says in his opinion that they're probably 95 percent correct because you know they're pretty responsible and there's a logic to it and yeah there's there are ways you can tell most of the time I got a second opinion so the second ER doctor had a different take on it and it went like this he too was not disagreeing with the basic premise that a doctor can know the accurate cause of death let's say 95 percent of the time so both doctors seem to be on that same page that the doctor knows and that it's not a problem of the doctor not knowing okay so just keeled that put a pin in it two doctors who actually do this work are sure that they do a pretty good job and I think that they would tell me the truth if they knew they were guessing I think they'd say well we you know honestly it's hard to tell we just take our best shot we think we're right most of the time I think they would have said that right because why wouldn't they it's not like they wouldn't have to hide that you know it's people doing the best they can with the information they have it wouldn't be any kind of a you know a bad mark on the record or anything but instead both of them seem to believe that the doctor can actually identify the cause of death and that the all the evidence is going to be pretty clear ninety-five percent of time but the second ye'are doctor added this little bit of flavor to the discussion and sad yes but there might be tremendous economic incentive to cheat to which I said just paraphrasing a longer conversation to which I said I don't believe that a doctor would cheat for the benefit of the hospital because the doctor has all the incentive in the world to just do the job right right I don't think there are a lot of doctors who are going into the doctor business to like you know get something over on the world I think most doctors just you know want to do a good job and I don't see and so I said to myself I can't really see a doctor intentionally mischaracterizing the cause of death when the doctors pay won't would change anyway and but maybe the hospital will make more money this high and so I couldn't square that and so here was the counter-argument which I give some weight to it goes like this the hospital a relationship with the doctors in which the doctors need to make the hospital happy and the hospital has to make the doctors happy and if there are them become unhappy then they don't have a relationship and that's not good and so the thought was that if the if the hospital definitely wants more coronavirus outcomes in terms of death certificates then even though the doctor is not inclined to lie and even though the doctor doesn't have a direct benefit it's really the hospital last benefit would the doctor be a team player and maybe be a little bit flexible on the ones that are sort of on the fence to which they say good point yeah that's a good point I would imagine that's exactly what to expect with human beings has nothing to do with hospitals and doctors but with human beings you could expect if somebody has a relationship and money's involved that if somebody wants something are they gonna be sort of suddenly if not directly pressure to give that thing that your your partner wants but here's my summary of this I don't believe doctors in any kind of major way would lie about the cause of death nor do I think that there are many cases that are on the fence that gets down to that five percent that probably could go either way and so maybe there's some mistakes so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a five percent bias because the doctors want the hospital to you know feel good about the doctor and everybody's playing along and the hospital makes money so the doctor cell is a place to work and stuff like that but you know we don't have a way to measure it I'll just so it's just my experience of life and my understanding of humans is that probably the deaths are being coded ninety to ninety percent correctly which is good enough to think there's not as some giant problem here that's my could be wrong let's see I love giving you reminders of things I said years ago so you can see whether or not they came to fruition and one of the one of my favorite predictions and it was my favorite because I knew that not a single person believed that this would happen nor did anybody take it seriously and here it is I said in 2015 that Trump would not just change what we thought of politics but they would alter our understanding of reality itself and I said it a number of times publicly and almost nobody ever engaged beyond that by saying well what do you mean like what exactly does that mean and if they add I don't know if I could have explained it but let me give you some examples so we saw for example that facts don't matter I mean that was a gigantic mental shift right you went from a world in 2014 ish in which you thought facts actually matter and that people use them to make decisions but I told you they don't and that that's not the way people are people don't use facts to make decisions except for the minor things that you know are either really obvious or they have no emotional content but for most of what we do we're emotional creatures and we rationalize it after the fact so I think most of you have come around to believe that is true and think about how massive that is changing your understanding of reality from facts matter to they don't matter that's a pretty fundamental change and I think a lot of you have gone on that journey with me but here's just a few other things about reality that have changed in just the last few years it's funny when you see them all together what is the Russia collusion thing was it there at least some point in in that when you said to yourself well I don't believe this is actually an organized coup attempt to throw the elected president of the United States what do you think now as of this week we know that basically that the Pfizer process was completely abused Attorney General Barth says basically well it could be incompetence what is certainly isn't looking like it and we're we're looking to see if anybody needs to go to jail so that's that's your Attorney General so whether or not no matter what we find about you know once we get to the bottom of the Russian collusion thing no matter what we find wouldn't you say that your belief about what's possible got modified a little bit because I would have said no you know if somebody had described this before any of it happened and said Scott give me give me a read on this tell me a thing if you think this could happen deep state actors would put together this you know BS charge about Russia that creates this whole conspiracy and it would be the grounds for impeachment and they would remove a legal elected president with just a bunch of stuff they made up I would have said to you I don't think so sure that's a thing and then we watched it happen we watched it happen now there's some of you who said we've known for years I would question what knowing means in this context there were certain certainly people who were confident that it was always a big conspiracy and people who thought it wasn't well I don't know if anybody knows I always I always point out the fact that there are always smart people all around every topic so if you ever get to the point where you know the answer some of them will be right but if you can't tell which ones are right ahead of time I don't know if it's anybody knowing they're right or it's just people are on all sides so somebody's got to be right anyway so we have a different opinion about how how slimy the people in our government are and can be we've lost all trust in our intelligence agencies I mean I have to admit that the Iraq weapons of mass destruction and and even other notable failures that they've had I think you know worth they surprised by the fall of the Iron Curtain so there's some famous failures of our intelligence agencies but did you think that they might not even be working on your side did it ever occur to you that our most trusted intelligence agencies were actually not even on your side they're not even on your team but we know that now because obviously there were important members of them who were working against the interests of the American public how about the World Health Organization I had two weeks ago did you think that was a legitimate international organization in which they were working toward a world health I kinda did like I kind of thought it was an actual organization dedicated to world health well I don't know what the World Health Organization is but it's nothing like that looks like it's some kind of Chinese propaganda Oregon how about how long ago was it that you thought the news was real I I came to this one sooner than you did because I've said this before but because I'm often the subject in the news I have a front row seat to see how inaccurate it is because when they're talking about me I know if it's accurate I'll be like I didn't do that I didn't say that that's all inaccurate but most of you are just observers you're just in the audience watching people like me get ripped apart by the media and you think well it's probably true yeah well they wouldn't say anything that wasn't a little bit true it's probably true but now you all know that the news is made up right basically everything you thought about the legitimacy of the media that's all gone isn't it I don't I don't think we think there's any legitimacy to the media at this point here's another one this is this is also really new this is a fresh one long term prediction models don't work this might be my favorite because I've spent 10 years of my life arguing that whether or not climate change is a big problem or not a big problem the prediction models are not science they're whatever assumptions you put in there they're not science and I think that this week the entire world is ready to say both Democrats and Republicans I think the entire world is looking at this and saying wait a minute where have we seen this before all the experts were on the same side they had a complicated prediction model which they used to convince the politicians and the public of something very expensive but then those models seem to be not as accurate as we had hoped what's that remind you of well I think that one of the big changes that's going to come out of this is that it's almost impossible to argue for climate change anymore because in order to make the argument you're going to say and you know we got to do some climate change and here's my argument here's my here's my long-term prediction model for 80 years and people are just going to say put that down put it down put it down and they'll say no I'm gonna model that's you see my graph does I put it down we're not going to listen to your long-term models anymore now even if out she said that he didn't use the models to decide to close down or to agree to close down the travel from China they were to agree to close down the economy rather he said that the the striking things were the experience that they observes in China and Italy so even if ouchy said they don't use the models in fact she said no I just looked at what happened in other places and said that's a problem now I think climate change is similar to that I wouldn't put too much credibility in the models but it might be true that the experts can just look at the the data and say hey it's getting kind of warm and we think we know why maybe we should be worried about that but the model part the models are not going to be accurate all right here's another thing I learned did you know that money can just be printed did you know that now on some level you didn't know that right you knew that we have printing presses and most of you are you know educated people watching this so you knew that the United States could always just print more dollar bills just print more money put it in circulation so you knew that we could do that but didn't you think it was a bad idea didn't you think that you could do it physically you could print more money but you don't want to do that because it would create inflation the simple reason for that is if there's more money in the system then people are willing to pay more for their goods and services and then the people who sell them say hey I've got a lot of demand I think I'll raise my prices so if you if you flood the system with too much cash you can cause inflation so there's no point doing it so there's no way you can just create money out of nothing except I think we just did it didn't we because in an environment in which inflation is basically impossible you know with the exception of the hoarded goods then or there's some price gouging for normal goods nobody's going to be able to raise a price so the United States just printed I don't know do we literally print it or have it as a digital I'm not sure exactly how that works oh it's probably a digital process but we created I know trillions of dollars and the only the only downside of creating trillions of dollars was that it might cause inflation which under this special condition can't it can't right nobody can raise the prices not enough demand for a while anyway so I feel like I'm missing something obvious because you know I actually have some background in this stuff and I'm pretty confused but did we find a trillion dollars of free money can somebody work that through me because I think there's you know there are greater implications than the simple ones that I'm explaining so there must be some downside that's a little more than I think but you know I always say that President Trump is good at finding free money on the table and picking it up like hey free money yeah anybody want this and when I heard that we were going to fund this stimulus if you want to call it that not by borrowing but rather by printing money and then I realized that inflation isn't going to go up even though we print the money I think Trump found 2 or 3 trillion dollars laying on the table am I wrong I have to be wrong right yeah is that is Joshua Gans if you're watching this in actual a real economist what am I doing wrong I mean did we just create three trillion dollars and nothing because we had this weird opportunity where there was no chance of inflation did that just happen I mean I'm actually curious I don't know but it might have it might have if you had to bet on this you should bet that I'm wrong about this by the way you should bet that there's some big variable that I'm not thinking about that would explain it all but otherwise we just created three trillion dollars out of nothing how does that change your view of reality it's messing with mine I'll tell you my view of reality has taken a beating if we just created three trillion dollars out of nothing now how hard is it going to be to argue against health care for all and paying off student loans when we just created three trillion dollars out of air how are you going to argue against you know let's say Bernie's big-ticket stuff as as Biden is carrying it forward how are you going to argue against it because you don't have enough money if we if you just printed three trillion dollars I see somebody saying yes you were wrong well normally I block people for just saying you're wrong without giving a reason but I'll give you a special disking dispensation today because I also think I'm wrong I just don't know why all right so maybe somebody can fix that for me so just to make things fun the the anti-trump press has designated a official race baiter so it looks like they I don't know if they pick teams or how they do this but somebody works for PBS named amici Alcindor apparently gets to sit in the White House press secretary and try to start race Wars so she asks all the dumbass questions that make the headlines because you shouldn't ask these questions and you know it's the wrong place and it's just dial so she was asking the the Surgeon General who's African American then he used he used some language to refer to grandpa and grandma he was using some culturally relevant language and she called them out for her because it sounded racist and then this poor this poor black guy who's the Surgeon General of the United States has to explain on camera to the designated race war starter in the audience this poor you know he's reached I know maybe the pinnacle of you know at least in terms of public service being the Surgeon General young guy I mean this is quite a good job right and he has a stand that they're listening to this woman ask him if he's racist seriously now here's my opinion I think she should be kicked out of the room by the administration that's not too harsh is it because if somebody's coming into the press conference for the sea emergency crisis situation to ask this dumbass question that has no value except to get people upset about race for no good reason whatsoever when we should be doing the opposite and pulling together under normal conditions you know a lot of the press is asking these gotcha questions but would it be unfair to uninvite her and just just yank her granules I would be okay with that wouldn't you now if this would if these were normal times I'd say maybe not you know let them ask their questions etc but I think she should be kicked out of the room because she's she's operating opposite of the national interest during an emergency and there's nothing happened you know she added nothing all right yeah he was talking about the language that he uses for his own family come on that poor guy I mean I've been pretty critical of the Surgeon General because of the face mask thing and he had a comment on that but even I felt bad for him having to go through that all right is RT or the hill anti-trump press I don't know what that means and if you notice that the president is being extra nice to Jim Acosta and he's also being extra nice to the governor's even the Democratic Governors and the president is also being extra nice to Joe Biden at least you know not the campaign answers are pretty vicious but the things that the President himself says he complimented Joe Biden he complimented the governor's he yet he's even calling Jim Acosta Jim have you noticed that he and he was actually sort of joking with him a little bit at one point so it even looks like the President and Jim Acosta have some weird day times that I'm sure is temporary but at least I like it during the yeah I kind of liked the show honestly you know I think the world would be worse without Jim Acosta yeah for being honest the one thing I'll give him credit for is that he understands he understands the show so you know I'm not gonna say that Trump is a genius because he knows you know how to operate showmanship for his advantage even though it's not typical politicking he knows how to use it well Acosta does the same thing I'm not I'm not going to compliment the president for doing that well and then watch Acosta do a well and not give him the same compliment which is Acosta knows what his job is I mean the way he's decided to define it his role in the world and he knows it's it's some form of wrestling you know and he knows it's more about the show and he brings the show and what does the president do does the president you know back away from the show never that's what we love about him he never backs away from the show so he goes into the show and then you've got the president doing a show in a constant doing a show and it's news for the day I kind of like it now you also need real reporters and stuff and a lot of things that Acosta says are so ridiculous they make your head explode but you in the context of the show he's a good character you know what I mean if you were gonna cast this as a movie he'd be a great character so in terms of my enjoyment of watching the whole the whole movie if as it were I like Jim Acosta he's a good addition to the movie if not your sense of information alright I'm going to teach you the most valuable thing you've ever learned and I'd like to save this for the end because only the people who really really care are here I ready I'm going to give you a little life hack that really could change fundamentally change your life it's such a little thing and it can really change things and it goes like this I learned years ago that touch you know the set the act of touching somebody or something is a skill you think it might not be and you think you're safari I know you'd be like somebody who's a trained massage therapist wouldn't know how to touch people correctly you know and maybe if you're just randomly touching something you wouldn't do it so well no that's all I'm talking about that's part of it so yes there is some technique about learning where to touch people and how hard and everything that will make you feel better but that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about intention if you were to have say you're walking through the underbrush and some of the underbrush was rubbing against parts of your body including your your your naughty bits would that excite you probably not because even though there was some sense of something touching you and your naughty parts it probably would not even register as anything exciting because there's no intention involved but the bush has no intention absent intention it touch loses all of its power this is the thing that will change your life I learned this because I couldn't understand why some people can touch you and it feels great well you know let's say in the context of dating or whatever and other people can touch you and it doesn't feel great it doesn't feel like much of anything and it doesn't seem to be related to how much you like the person or they like you or what they look like or your chemistry there's something that some people have that's actually a skill that if they just lay their hand on your shoulder some people can make you feel good and some people can't and I figured out what it is and it's intention and you can you can even test it on your animals here's here specifically what I mean when you're touching somebody whether human or pet you should be thinking to yourself in your mind the internal thought should be how does this feel to the other person in other words you're putting yourself in their head and you're focusing completely on the task if you do those two things you focus completely on the task and the other person knows it and you put yourself in their head and touch them in a way that you would imagine if this were you you would like it even though you might be a little different you know you have to learn what they like and adjust as you go but that little bit of intention will turn an ordinary touch into almost an electric experience now you won't believe it until you try it but try this experience of touching somebody if you ever had somebody who is let's say you you convince your boyfriend/girlfriend spouse to scratch your back and they're just gonna scratch your back and let's say you like that we'll just for for example let's say you like it if that person is also reading their phone and scratching your back while reading the phone their intention is gone it's just a mechanical thing and it's just like the branch that brushes you in the forest even though it should feel exactly the same as soon as the intention is gone and the focus is gone it just becomes something scratching you so once yeah once you find somebody you can actually touch so it might be a while try that try complete focus put yourself in there in there mode and then do that you'll you'll also learn the massage therapist the best ones do that that's that's the difference between a great massage therapist and a good one they might have the same moves but one of them is going to be electric and one of them is just gonna feel like something on your back all right you see in the comments that there are some people who are agreeing with it nobody is disagreeing with it so most of you just are probably hearing it for the first time like you've never really thought of it in those terms try it if there's somebody in your house or a pet or something try it all right nursing doesn't okay somebody says I think you're confirming in the comments that when you learn to be a nurse that that's that might be part of their training for the the empathy etcetera that makes sense all right and that's all I needed to tell you that stop stealing my moves all right that's all for now and I will talk to you in the morning you know went

bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum

do you like my exciting new introduction

you get to watch the lights come on then

the shades go down except one of my

shades isn't working

Hey get down there there we go there we

go

it's exciting is that sort of like a

little build-up I know

but back to me that's enough of that how

the heck have you been

I missed you spent 11 hours and somebody

says does Christina still cut your hair

well she's in she's in social isolation

in a different house so I was going to

cut my hair on on live stream today but

I didn't feel like cleaning up the hair

in my office so I'm not going to do that

I'm not taking Twitter questions but if

I see something go by all I'll take it

questioned so here's what's happened

since what last we spoke

I saw britt hume tweeting a quote by

anthony Falchi doctor foul she in which

fat she was saying that he's never had

much trust in models and prey hume a

paraphrasing but basically britt hume

said why are you telling us now because

you seemed you seemed pretty confident

you know not too long ago seemed pretty

confident back then but now you don't

trust models and here's what I find

funny about that the reason for how she

says he doesn't trust the models is that

they're only as good as the assumptions

they've put in them is that wrong is

xiaochi wrong that the models are only

as good as the assumptions no of course

that of course now we all know that and

is that the most ordinary expected thing

you could ever say about models that it

depends on the assumptions you put in

it's just the most obvious thing so I

said in a different tweet today that I

would I would lose respect for any

expert who believed models work any

expert doesn't matter what the field is

if they say these long range multi

variable models work and actually can

give you a photograph of the future I

would not trust those experts you know

what I mean

but what was funniest about this is Brit

Hume is probably you know one of the

most you know experienced news people

you know he's seen everything from every

angle you know one of the sharpest you

know observers of political life

especially and apparently Bray Hume

thought these models were actually

telling you something to which I think

really having you get this far and not

know that long-range prediction models

are not are not telling you even

slightly more than you could just guess

because if they could anybody who could

who had that kind of superpower to

predict the future even with a little

bit of edge over over chance would be a

trillionaire if anybody can do it

somebody would do it to get rich there'd

be a million ways you can exploit that

to get rich so no dr. Falchi his my

opinion of dr. vouch he just went up a

level when he said he doesn't believe

the models the the viola G models so

that is the correct answer

dr. fetcher I see that the ex FDA had

dr. Gotlieb is saying that we should go

back to work but ideally we should have

widespread screening now I would like to

nominate for the most useless thing that

anybody can say about the corona virus

is we should have widespread testing why

don't we have more testing hey I've got

an idea why don't we do testing you know

it South Korea did some testing why

don't we do some testing hey I've got an

idea has anybody thought of this we

could do some testing have you have you

realized am I the first one to think of

this that if we could test people and we

could test a lot of people that would

really help we'd know that who didn't

Wow

I'm so sick of people going on

television or in the new

to tell us that it would really be good

if we could test if we had the tests if

we could I'm pretty sure that would have

been right at the top of the list that

our experts would have wanted to do

please stop saying we should do more

testing there's nobody who disagrees

with that we just can't do it so you

know it would also be good to stop this

pandemic magic why don't we use magic

people people are you not thinking it

through just use magic Oh magic isn't

real well then we'll just test we'll

just do massive oh we don't have massive

tests they don't exist and we can't make

them that fast oh all right well the

good news is that there are a number of

exciting developments in the world of

testing now by the way I one of my best

predictions I believe based on some

information I had that most people

didn't have is that the world of quickly

testing stuff had moved way way into the

future but hadn't quite been productized

yet in other words there were a lot of

startups who already had licensed

technology from government labs that

would allow you to very quickly check

things you know inexpensively and

accurately in the field so I'd see the

number of startups try to exploit that

technology so I predicted early on that

you would suddenly see leaping into

existence this technology because now it

was an emergency so you know funding

could be had and things would get ramped

up quickly and just like I imagined I

think you get it well I'm pretty sure

you're gonna see some new stuff let's

just say I get to see things before you

do and there's some exciting stuff

coming in that realm here's an

interesting positive thought the

president said something along these

lines but

want to extend the thought so the

president was making his economic

prediction that he said you know the

site the second quarters you know going

to be bad the third quarter maybe you

could start to think about things

getting better but the president thought

that there was lots of pent-up demand

and that the fourth quarter could be

record-setting I really really like the

way he puts that because he's very he's

being very I'd say conservative about

what would happen this corner next

obviously they're not going to be great

but then he gives us a pretty legitimate

most optimistic case that the end of

this year things would start picking up

and maybe even set records because of

pent-up demand yeah that could happen I

mean it's just as likely that they'll be

soft demand because people got crushed

economically but you could see the

people who didn't get crushed just

stepping it up and having a little extra

spending I can see that here's the part

I want to add and I think that the

president referred to this by you're

taking the level deeper which is we've

never had a time in our history where so

many of us took a time out and just

stopped working and sort of had time to

think about things now you think to

yourself well that's not a big deal I

mean we we often we often take vacations

and we take the weekend off it's not

that big a deal that we have time to

think about things but here's what's

different because of the restrictions

placed on all of our lives and the

economic impact etc almost everybody had

to rethink from the ground up everything

they do you had to rethink how you eat

how do you give food you had to rethink

your social life you have to rethink

travel you have to rethink cleaning you

had to rethink shipping you had to

rethink your job and every part of your

job you had to think education family

structure who's babysitting all of it

all of it had to be rethought now here's

my positive

spit of this I think that that process

makes people realize there's just a ton

of stuff that needs to be better from

you know how many people realize that

they could get more work done by not

commuting yeah just to pick one simple

example and I've got a feeling that

people saw different ways to do things

they saw red tape at being cut they saw

people doing things faster than they

thought they saw innovation they saw

people stepping up and and everybody had

to rethink from scratch how can I do

this job I had been doing you know

what's the smarter way to do this now

that meets all these different

requirements and I think what's gonna

happen and maybe we'll never be alone

measurement but I think that there's

going to be a systems innovation surge

and when I say systems I mean the system

of how do you travel to work the system

of hada you go to school the system of

you know the workplace how do you

organize it and everything like that so

I think people are going to

fundamentally rethink all of our systems

and as you know I'm the biggest

proponent of making sure you've got good

systems and it could be really gigantic

in terms of its long-term impact simply

the fact that our creativity was was

challenged and this concentrated away so

it'll take a while for that those

benefits to work their way through the

system but I think it could be really

big I was trying to think of all the

things that will be different after we

get back to work certainly the work at

home thing I I think the argument for

self-driving cars it just got way

stronger as I often say persuasion is

not just about how good your argument is

it's also about getting people's

attention so the things that people

think about the most

they irrationally think are the

important things because they're

thinking about it so if you make

somebody think about something a lot it

will become important to them when it

wasn't

before so here's my point of that

because a lot of attention will be put

on the natural death rate of driving

only because we have this weird

experiment when people stop driving for

a while so you can actually really see

in concrete terms how many people did

not die because we weren't all in

traffic and I think what that's going to

do is it's going to push people toward

thinking wait a minute

we saved I'm gonna pick a number I don't

know what the real number is people are

gonna save are you telling me we saved

twenty five thousand lives by not

driving and then we can bank that

savings and always save twenty five

thousand lives or for the full year

maybe it's fifty thousand could we sell

could we save fifty thousand lives a

year just by having self-driving cars

that would almost never crash I mean if

he did it right they would never crash

so I think the self-driving cars just

went from you know something you'd like

someday to my god why don't we hurry up

on this cuz you could save fifty

thousand lives a year that's as much as

that's as much as we close down the

entire economy for I think contact

tracing is going to be thing did you see

the story then I guess Apple and Google

have decided to release I don't know

some standards technical standards or an

API or something but the idea is that

they're making it possible to build apps

where you can tell if you've been near

somebody so let's say you've you were

diagnosed with having coronavirus you

could with a few pushes of whatever

buttons on your app and maybe you don't

have to allow it I don't know if you

have to give permission where the

government is just going to do it at

some point you have to give permission

so maybe you give permission you know

from the hello SATs before you've been

diagnosed so that your Bluetooth is

telling you who you're bumping into all

day who also has a bluetooth on so the

idea is that you could look at the

digital trail and you send people a text

and say hey you stood within four

to this person who has coronavirus go

get a checked or something like that

that could be huge you know if you were

gonna make a short list of all the

things they could get you back to work

well one of them would be widespread

testing which we can't do yet but you

know maybe in a few weeks the other

would be magic of course which doesn't

exist so that would be great

and then we have this new thing which is

these apps that will do the Bluetooth

contact things which doesn't exist but

what imagines that in a month or so

maybe we could have something like that

working but all of those and maybe the

hydroxyl chloroquine makes a difference

maybe genetic testing will tell us

something so we probably have four

different ways that we could attack the

virus so I think we'll get there I think

education online will change completely

I think the biggest thing that will

change online education is the first

time somebody doesn't right in my

opinion has never been done right no

it's now like I've seen every online

course but nothing I've seen and what I

mean and what I mean by doing it right

is something it takes like a Hollywood

movie kind of a model and they get they

hire somebody who's just good on camera

you know looks good talks well somebody

to write the script somebody to do the

graphics somebody to direct it you know

so you've got like a real movie

production but it's just a college

course or a class and once it's done

right and especially you would also do a

lot of a B testing so you might test it

out with small crowds before you

finalized it you know to make sure that

you're saying things clearly etc so to

basically produce a class the way

manufacturers produce any other product

which is it goes through testing and

research and polling you know you've got

a team of experts coming together it's a

long term project right now we just

point a camera at somebody who knows how

to teach and they just teach but the

soon as somebody does it right the first

time

it's gonna turn into a real business and

it might be I would argue all right here

here's another prediction I will argue

that the biggest business of the future

will be online training yeah how do you

like that prediction I'll say it again

just so there's no there's no there's no

confusion my prediction is that the

biggest industry and the future the one

with the most dollar amount will be

online education because the courses are

going to be you know colleges will

eventually have to disappear because

they don't really make sense you know

for the price for what you're getting

they just don't make any sense so I

think regular colleges will you know

start to fade away online education will

grow and just keep getting better and I

think that when people are producing

imagine what you would pay just think

about this imagine what you would pay to

have a course that you needed let's say

you needed it for your job or was part

of a degree program but you could take

the course that was as fun as watching

the best movie you've watched like it's

just really entertaining but you're also

learning it at the same time how much

extra would you pay for that versus the

boring one that makes you want to you

know take your brain out with a spoon

well you would pay a lot for that you

know not everybody but there would be

enough people with money who would pay a

lot for that training that's a little

bit better and I think eventually the

transmission of information and training

will be the biggest market in the world

that's what I think dr. Carlson asked a

question that has had me scratching my

head since I heard it and I guess I did

a fact check on this because there's an

assumption in this or a fact that I'm

not sure about but what doctor said was

that outside of Wuhan there hasn't been

a major break out in China there hasn't

been another city

China that got real problems like New

York or or would and Tucker says what's

up with that because we also learned

that maybe the virus is even way more

viral than we thought so how could it be

way more viral than we thought

millions of people have left Wuhan since

since the worst part of the pandemic

they're traveling all around is super

viral and we don't have other major

outbreaks in China how would you even

speculate that that's possible well

let's let's do that let's speculate

number one is that China is lying okay

that's the obvious one right the most

obvious one is they're lying but if what

happened in Wuhan was happening anywhere

else how would we not notice is it

possible that something as big as Wuhan

or are a half of Wuhan you know would

still be gigantic right it would still

be a really big deal how would we not

notice that even even with their control

of the media and everything else we

would know right so so one possibility

is it is happening and China is like you

know millions of people are dying we

just don't know I guess it's possible

right I guess that's one possibility

here's another possibility they have a

vaccine right what's the possibility

that they have a vaccine well here again

you have the same problem as the first

example if they had a vaccine it means

they would have vaccinated what hundreds

of millions of people do you think

there's any chance we wouldn't know if

hundreds of millions of people were

forcefully vaccinated in a period of a

few weeks yeah we'd know that right

again we don't have great visibility

about everything happening

China but something of that size we know

right so I'm gonna rule out vaccination

and I'm gonna rule out that it is

actually big outbreaks everywhere

because we would notice those two things

here's another one

suppose I see it in the comments you're

a little bit ahead of me

suppose hydroxychloroquine and as if the

Mason and zinc

work really really well and by work

really well I mean well enough that it

doesn't overwhelm your hospitals even if

you've got an outbreak would you know

would you be aware of it if a lot of

regular Chinese people we're having

something that was like a mild cold but

they were taking their their meds and it

didn't hospitalized them and they got

better in a week would with the rest of

the world know that that was happening

on a massive scale well here again we

might know because that's a lot of

hydroxychloroquine if they're handing it

out like candy over there - they're a

billion or whatever plus people wouldn't

we know that I think we know but of the

three choices it's the one we would

least likely know would you agree with

that that if they had a vaccine they had

forced hundreds of billions of people to

take in a few weeks we know that if if

millions of people were dying we know

that but if they were giving out massive

amounts of hydroxychloroquine anytime

somebody showed the first signs of

symptoms would we know that because

let's say they only gave us the people

who showed symptoms what do we know

maybe not so if I had to guess I would

say that would be the one that's

slightly more likely or it could be some

other some other of a therapeutic I'm

hearing a lot of people worrying that

the the crackdown and the shelter in

place orders and all that are the

beginning of softening us up for the

ultimate dictator move we're all of our

rights and freedoms are taken away from

us

I'm finding no sympathy for that opinion

because first of all I don't think it's

happening I just think we're doing what

we need to for the emergency and when

it's over we'll get rid of the things so

there's some sense that any kind of

surveillance or tracking or lack of

privacy would just automatically become

permanent

even after we solved the problem for

which they had been implemented I don't

think so I don't know of all the things

I'm gonna worry about this year it

doesn't make my top hundred now maybe

maybe I'm missing something but to me it

looks like the United States is really

good at tweaking things when they need

to then on tweaking it when they're done

no I I think that I think that you would

have to have a different mindset in your

public for that to be a big risk I said

this before but I'll say it again which

is the the great asset that Americans

have is the American idea you know the

idea of what is right and fair the

brainwashing that we all got as kids you

know to be patriotic and I say

brainwashing but not in a negative way

because to have a coherent society you

can't they have to braid brainwash

people to be on the same page culturally

religiously in some cases but at least

in terms of the constitution of the law

so you need some brainwashing United

States does it really well it's created

a society a very independent you know we

we could will resist at the drop of a

hat so there's something about the

American mind that I think really makes

the whole dictatorship thing seem

ridiculous but you would have to see our

minds change a whole lot before you

would see me getting worried but as long

as our minds are good then what we're

doing with the details is not the

beginning of the dictator state it's

just what we need to do to solve a

problem right now that's what I say I

asked this question

about whether the deaths are being

correctly characterized and added to the

right categories for the coronavirus

deaths especially and I got two

feedbacks from ER doctors all right so I

asked is there an ER doctor who can

confirm the following belief so this is

my belief my belief without being an ER

doctor is that they probably are quite

good at accurately identifying the real

cause of death the I'll give you my

simple examples which is if somebody had

diabetes for fifteen years and they come

in and they die within a day of

respiratory problems and you know the

classic red eyes of the coronavirus

patient and you know as every sign of of

coronavirus that it probably wasn't the

diabetes that they've had for fifteen

years like it could be but it'd just be

this weird coincidence that that was the

day you died so that's my simplified

story but as one ER doctor explained to

me that the doctors do actually look at

the patient's history what's happened

recently you know that the entire

constellation of factors and then they

decided what the cause of death is

there's a whole process for doing it and

at least for this one ER doctor it was

his opinion that there that there are

categories that they're categorizing

there's probably 95% correct all right

so that's that's one opinion that's

somebody who assigned a lot of death

certificates so this is this is coming

from somebody who has personally signed

hundreds of death certificates from the

ER and he says in his opinion that

they're probably 95 percent correct

because you know they're pretty

responsible and there's a logic to it

and yeah there's there are ways you can

tell most of the time I got a second

opinion

so the second ER doctor had a different

take on it and it went like this

he too was not disagreeing with the

basic

premise that a doctor can know the

accurate cause of death let's say 95

percent of the time so both doctors seem

to be on that same page that the doctor

knows and that it's not a problem of the

doctor not knowing

okay so just keeled that put a pin in it

two doctors who actually do this work

are sure that they do a pretty good job

and I think that they would tell me the

truth if they knew they were guessing I

think they'd say well we you know

honestly it's hard to tell we just take

our best shot we think we're right most

of the time I think they would have said

that right because why wouldn't they

it's not like they wouldn't have to hide

that you know it's people doing the best

they can with the information they have

it wouldn't be any kind of a you know a

bad mark on the record or anything but

instead both of them seem to believe

that the doctor can actually identify

the cause of death and that the all the

evidence is going to be pretty clear

ninety-five percent of time but the

second ye'are doctor added this little

bit of flavor to the discussion and sad

yes but there might be tremendous

economic incentive to cheat to which I

said just paraphrasing a longer

conversation to which I said I don't

believe that a doctor would cheat for

the benefit of the hospital because the

doctor has all the incentive in the

world to just do the job right right I

don't think there are a lot of doctors

who are going into the doctor business

to like you know get something over on

the world I think most doctors just you

know want to do a good job and I don't

see and so I said to myself I can't

really see a doctor intentionally

mischaracterizing the cause of death

when the doctors pay won't would change

anyway and but maybe the hospital will

make more money this high and so I

couldn't square that and so here was the

counter-argument which I give some

weight to it goes like this the hospital

a relationship with the doctors in which

the doctors need to make the hospital

happy and the hospital has to make the

doctors happy and if there are them

become unhappy then they don't have a

relationship and that's not good and so

the thought was that if the if the

hospital definitely wants more

coronavirus outcomes in terms of death

certificates then even though the doctor

is not inclined to lie and even though

the doctor doesn't have a direct benefit

it's really the hospital last benefit

would the doctor be a team player and

maybe be a little bit flexible on the

ones that are sort of on the fence to

which they say good point yeah that's a

good point I would imagine that's

exactly what to expect with human beings

has nothing to do with hospitals and

doctors but with human beings you could

expect if somebody has a relationship

and money's involved that if somebody

wants something are they gonna be sort

of suddenly if not directly pressure to

give that thing that your your partner

wants but here's my summary of this I

don't believe doctors in any kind of

major way would lie about the cause of

death nor do I think that there are many

cases that are on the fence that gets

down to that five percent that probably

could go either way and so maybe there's

some mistakes so I wouldn't be surprised

if there's a five percent bias because

the doctors want the hospital to you

know feel good about the doctor and

everybody's playing along and the

hospital makes money so the doctor cell

is a place to work and stuff like that

but you know we don't have a way to

measure it

I'll just so it's just my experience of

life and my understanding of humans is

that probably the deaths are being coded

ninety to ninety percent correctly which

is good enough to think there's not as

some giant problem here that's my

could be wrong let's see I love giving

you reminders of things I said years ago

so you can see whether or not they came

to fruition and one of the one of my

favorite predictions and it was my

favorite because I knew that not a

single person believed that this would

happen nor did anybody take it seriously

and here it is I said in 2015 that Trump

would not just change what we thought of

politics but they would alter our

understanding of reality itself and I

said it a number of times publicly and

almost nobody ever engaged beyond that

by saying well what do you mean like

what exactly does that mean and if they

add I don't know if I could have

explained it but let me give you some

examples so we saw for example that

facts don't matter I mean that was a

gigantic mental shift right

you went from a world in 2014 ish in

which you thought facts actually matter

and that people use them to make

decisions but I told you they don't and

that that's not the way people are

people don't use facts to make decisions

except for the minor things that you

know are either really obvious or they

have no emotional content but for most

of what we do we're emotional creatures

and we rationalize it after the fact so

I think most of you have come around to

believe that is true and think about how

massive that is changing your

understanding of reality from facts

matter to they don't matter

that's a pretty fundamental change and I

think a lot of you have gone on that

journey with me but here's just a few

other things about reality that have

changed in just the last few years it's

funny when you see them all together

what is the Russia collusion thing was

it there at least some point in in that

when you said to yourself well I don't

believe this is actually an organized

coup attempt to

throw the elected president of the

United States what do you think now as

of this week we know that basically that

the Pfizer process was completely abused

Attorney General Barth says basically

well it could be incompetence

what is certainly isn't looking like it

and we're we're looking to see if

anybody needs to go to jail

so that's that's your Attorney General

so whether or not no matter what we find

about you know once we get to the bottom

of the Russian collusion thing no matter

what we find wouldn't you say that your

belief about what's possible got

modified a little bit because I would

have said no you know if somebody had

described this before any of it happened

and said Scott give me give me a read on

this tell me a thing if you think this

could happen deep state actors would put

together this you know BS charge about

Russia that creates this whole

conspiracy and it would be the grounds

for impeachment and they would remove a

legal elected president with just a

bunch of stuff they made up I would have

said to you I don't think so sure that's

a thing and then we watched it happen we

watched it happen now there's some of

you who said we've known for years I

would question what knowing means in

this context there were certain

certainly people who were confident that

it was always a big conspiracy and

people who thought it wasn't well I

don't know if anybody knows I always I

always point out the fact that there are

always smart people all around every

topic so if you ever get to the point

where you know the answer some of them

will be right but if you can't tell

which ones are right ahead of time I

don't know if it's anybody knowing

they're right or it's just people are on

all sides so somebody's got to be right

anyway so we have a different opinion

about how how slimy the people in our

government are and can be

we've lost all trust in our intelligence

agencies I mean I have to admit

that the Iraq weapons of mass

destruction and and even other notable

failures that they've had I think you

know worth they surprised by the fall of

the Iron Curtain so there's some famous

failures of our intelligence agencies

but did you think that they might not

even be working on your side did it ever

occur to you that our most trusted

intelligence agencies were actually not

even on your side they're not even on

your team but we know that now because

obviously there were important members

of them who were working against the

interests of the American public how

about the World Health Organization I

had two weeks ago did you think that was

a legitimate international organization

in which they were working toward a

world health I kinda did like I kind of

thought it was an actual organization

dedicated to world health well I don't

know what the World Health Organization

is but it's nothing like that looks like

it's some kind of Chinese propaganda

Oregon how about how long ago was it

that you thought the news was real I I

came to this one sooner than you did

because I've said this before but

because I'm often the subject in the

news I have a front row seat to see how

inaccurate it is because when they're

talking about me I know if it's accurate

I'll be like I didn't do that I didn't

say that that's all inaccurate but most

of you are just observers you're just in

the audience watching people like me get

ripped apart by the media and you think

well it's probably true yeah well they

wouldn't say anything that wasn't a

little bit true it's probably true but

now you all know that the news is made

up right basically everything you

thought about the legitimacy of the

media that's all gone isn't it I don't I

don't think we think there's any

legitimacy to the media at this point

here's another one this is this is also

really new this is a fresh one long term

prediction models don't work

this might be my favorite because I've

spent 10 years of my life arguing that

whether or not climate change is a big

problem or not a big problem the

prediction models are not science

they're whatever assumptions you put in

there they're not science and I think

that this week the entire world is ready

to say both Democrats and Republicans I

think the entire world is looking at

this and saying wait a minute where have

we seen this before

all the experts were on the same side

they had a complicated prediction model

which they used to convince the

politicians and the public of something

very expensive but then those models

seem to be not as accurate as we had

hoped

what's that remind you of well I think

that one of the big changes that's going

to come out of this is that it's almost

impossible to argue for climate change

anymore because in order to make the

argument you're going to say and you

know we got to do some climate change

and here's my argument here's my here's

my long-term prediction model for 80

years and people are just going to say

put that down put it down put it down

and they'll say no I'm gonna model

that's you see my graph does I put it

down we're not going to listen to your

long-term models anymore

now even if out she said that he didn't

use the models to decide to close down

or to agree to close down the travel

from China they were to agree to close

down the economy rather he said that the

the striking things were the experience

that they observes in China and Italy so

even if ouchy said they don't use the

models in fact she said no I just looked

at what happened in other places and

said that's a problem now I think

climate change is similar to that I

wouldn't put too much credibility in the

models

but it might be true that the experts

can just look at the the data and say

hey it's getting kind of warm and we

think we know why maybe we should be

worried about that but the model part

the models are not going to be accurate

all right here's another thing I learned

did you know that money can just be

printed did you know that now on some

level you didn't know that right you

knew that we have printing presses and

most of you are you know educated people

watching this so you knew that the

United States could always just print

more dollar bills just print more money

put it in circulation so you knew that

we could do that but didn't you think it

was a bad idea didn't you think that you

could do it physically you could print

more money but you don't want to do that

because it would create inflation the

simple reason for that is if there's

more money in the system then people are

willing to pay more for their goods and

services and then the people who sell

them say hey I've got a lot of demand I

think I'll raise my prices so if you if

you flood the system with too much cash

you can cause inflation so there's no

point doing it so there's no way you can

just create money out of nothing except

I think we just did it didn't we because

in an environment in which inflation is

basically impossible you know with the

exception of the hoarded goods then or

there's some price gouging for normal

goods nobody's going to be able to raise

a price so the United States just

printed I don't know do we literally

print it or have it as a digital I'm not

sure exactly how that works oh it's

probably a digital process but we

created

I know trillions of dollars and the only

the only downside of creating trillions

of dollars was that it might cause

inflation which under this special

condition can't it can't right

nobody can raise the prices not enough

demand for a while anyway

so I feel like I'm missing something

obvious because you know I actually have

some background in this stuff and I'm

pretty confused but did we find a

trillion dollars of free money

can somebody work that through me

because I think there's you know there

are greater implications than the simple

ones that I'm explaining so there must

be some downside that's a little more

than I think but you know I always say

that President Trump is good at finding

free money on the table and picking it

up like hey free money yeah anybody want

this and when I heard that we were going

to fund this stimulus if you want to

call it that

not by borrowing but rather by printing

money and then I realized that inflation

isn't going to go up even though we

print the money I think Trump found 2 or

3 trillion dollars laying on the table

am I wrong I have to be wrong right

yeah is that is Joshua Gans if you're

watching this in actual a real economist

what am I doing wrong

I mean did we just create three trillion

dollars and nothing because we had this

weird opportunity where there was no

chance of inflation did that just happen

I mean I'm actually curious I don't know

but it might have it might have if you

had to bet on this you should bet that

I'm wrong about this by the way you

should bet that there's some big

variable that I'm not thinking about

that would explain it all but otherwise

we just created three trillion dollars

out of nothing how does that change your

view of reality it's messing with mine

I'll tell you my view of reality has

taken a beating if we just created three

trillion dollars out of nothing now how

hard is it going to be

to argue against health care for all and

paying off student loans when we just

created three trillion dollars out of

air how are you going to argue against

you know let's say Bernie's big-ticket

stuff as as Biden is carrying it forward

how are you going to argue against it

because you don't have enough money

if we if you just printed three trillion

dollars I see somebody saying yes you

were wrong well normally I block people

for just saying you're wrong without

giving a reason but I'll give you a

special

disking dispensation today because I

also think I'm wrong I just don't know

why all right so maybe somebody can fix

that for me so just to make things fun

the the anti-trump press has designated

a official race baiter so it looks like

they I don't know if they pick teams or

how they do this but somebody works for

PBS named amici Alcindor apparently gets

to sit in the White House press

secretary and try to start race Wars so

she asks all the dumbass questions that

make the headlines because you shouldn't

ask these questions and you know it's

the wrong place and it's just dial so

she was asking the the Surgeon General

who's African American then he used he

used some language to refer to grandpa

and grandma he was using some culturally

relevant language and she called them

out for her because it sounded racist

and then this poor this poor black guy

who's the Surgeon General of the United

States has to explain on camera to the

designated race war starter in the

audience this poor you know he's reached

I know maybe the pinnacle of you know at

least in terms of public service being

the Surgeon General young guy I mean

this is quite a good job right and he

has a stand that they're listening to

this woman ask him if he's racist

seriously

now here's my opinion I think she should

be kicked out of the room by the

administration that's not too harsh is

it because

if somebody's coming into the press

conference for the sea emergency crisis

situation to ask this dumbass question

that has no value except to get people

upset about race for no good reason

whatsoever when we should be doing the

opposite and pulling together under

normal conditions you know a lot of the

press is asking these gotcha questions

but would it be unfair to uninvite her

and just just yank her granules I would

be okay with that

wouldn't you now if this would if these

were normal times I'd say maybe not you

know let them ask their questions etc

but I think she should be kicked out of

the room because she's she's operating

opposite of the national interest during

an emergency and there's nothing

happened you know she added nothing all

right yeah he was talking about the

language that he uses for his own family

come on

that poor guy I mean I've been pretty

critical of the Surgeon General because

of the face mask thing and he had a

comment on that but even I felt bad for

him having to go through that all right

is RT or the hill anti-trump press I

don't know what that means

and if you notice that the president is

being extra nice to Jim Acosta and he's

also being extra nice to the governor's

even the Democratic Governors and the

president is also being extra nice to

Joe Biden at least you know not the

campaign answers are pretty vicious but

the things that the President himself

says he complimented Joe Biden he

complimented the governor's he yet he's

even calling Jim Acosta Jim have you

noticed that he and he was actually sort

of joking with him a little bit at one

point so it even looks like the

President and Jim Acosta have some weird

day times that I'm sure is temporary but

at least I like it during the yeah I

kind of liked the show honestly you know

I think the world would be worse without

Jim Acosta yeah for being honest

the one thing I'll give him credit for

is that he understands he understands

the show so you know I'm not gonna say

that Trump is a genius because he knows

you know how to operate showmanship for

his advantage even though it's not

typical politicking he knows how to use

it well Acosta does the same thing I'm

not I'm not going to compliment the

president for doing that well and then

watch Acosta do a well and not give him

the same compliment which is Acosta

knows what his job is I mean the way

he's decided to define it his role in

the world and he knows it's it's some

form of wrestling you know and he knows

it's more about the show and he brings

the show and what does the president do

does the president you know back away

from the show never that's what we love

about him he never backs away from the

show so he goes into the show and then

you've got the president doing a show in

a constant doing a show and it's news

for the day I kind of like it

now you also need real reporters and

stuff and a lot of things that Acosta

says are so ridiculous they make your

head explode but you in the context of

the show

he's a good character you know what I

mean if you were gonna cast this as a

movie he'd be a great character so in

terms of my enjoyment of watching the

whole the whole movie if as it were I

like Jim Acosta he's a good addition to

the movie if not your sense of

information alright I'm going to teach

you the most valuable thing you've ever

learned and I'd like to save this for

the end because only the people who

really really care are here I ready I'm

going to give you a little life hack

that really could change fundamentally

change your life it's such a little

thing and it can really change things

and it goes like this I learned years

ago that touch you know the set the act

of touching somebody or something is a

skill you think it might not be and you

think you're safari I know you'd be like

somebody who's a trained massage

therapist wouldn't know how to touch

people correctly you know and maybe if

you're just randomly touching something

you wouldn't do it so well no that's all

I'm talking about that's part of it so

yes there is some technique about

learning where to touch people and how

hard and everything that will make you

feel better but that's not what I'm

talking about I'm talking about

intention if you were to have say you're

walking through the underbrush and some

of the underbrush was rubbing against

parts of your body including your your

your naughty bits would that excite you

probably not because even though there

was some sense of something touching you

and your naughty parts it probably would

not even register as anything exciting

because there's no intention involved

but the bush has no intention absent

intention it touch loses all of its

power this is the thing that will change

your life

I learned this because I couldn't

understand why some people can touch you

and it feels great well you know let's

say in the context of dating or whatever

and other people can touch you and it

doesn't feel great it doesn't feel like

much of anything

and it doesn't seem to be related to how

much you like the person or they like

you or what they look like or your

chemistry there's something that some

people have that's actually a skill that

if they just lay their hand on your

shoulder some people can make you feel

good and some people can't and I figured

out what it is and it's intention and

you can you can even test it on your

animals here's here specifically what I

mean when you're touching somebody

whether human or pet you should be

thinking to yourself in your mind the

internal thought should be how does this

feel to the other person in other words

you're putting yourself in their head

and you're focusing completely on the

task if you do those two things you

focus completely on the task and the

other person knows it and you put

yourself in their head and touch them in

a way that you would imagine if this

were you you would like it even though

you might be a little different you know

you have to learn what they like and

adjust as you go but that little bit of

intention will turn an ordinary touch

into almost an electric experience now

you won't believe it until you try it

but try this experience of touching

somebody if you ever had somebody who is

let's say you you convince your

boyfriend/girlfriend spouse to scratch

your back and they're just gonna scratch

your back and let's say you like that

we'll just for for example let's say you

like it if that person is also reading

their phone and scratching your back

while reading the phone their intention

is gone it's just a mechanical thing and

it's just like the branch that brushes

you in the forest even though it should

feel exactly the same as soon as the

intention is gone and the focus is gone

it just becomes something scratching you

so once yeah once you find somebody you

can actually touch so it might be a

while try that try complete focus put

yourself in there in there

mode and then do that you'll you'll also

learn the massage therapist the best

ones do that that's that's the

difference between a great massage

therapist and a good one

they might have the same moves but one

of them is going to be electric and one

of them is just gonna feel like

something on your back all right you see

in the comments that there are some

people who are agreeing with it

nobody is disagreeing with it so most of

you just are probably hearing it for the

first time like you've never really

thought of it in those terms try it if

there's somebody in your house or a pet

or something try it all right

nursing doesn't okay somebody says I

think you're confirming in the comments

that when you learn to be a nurse that

that's that might be part of their

training for the the empathy etcetera

that makes sense all right and that's

all I needed to tell you that stop

stealing my moves all right that's all

for now and I will talk to you in the

morning you know went