Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas

Context —

the first U.S. president to nominate a mother of Black children to the Supreme Court. He's the first one to nominate a mother of Black children to the Supreme Court. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking in terms of diversity on the Supreme Court, wouldn't it be better for an actual Black woman with Black children to be nominated? Yeah, yeah, okay I see that point. You know it would be…

← Previous segment →

you add something to okay that's awesome I respect that 100 percent respect it and now we're done talking about it. As soon as you depart it's just good and you put that well it's not good you're still sort of a jerk. You have put a penalty on good behavior. Good behavior, adopting Black orphans, it's good behavior. I think we'd all be happy about that. But he penalized it a little bit right? Every time you penalize good behavior or support bad behavior, let's say violence and looting, you are in a loser strategy and there's no real debate about this. There's no domain in the world. There's no professional coach. There's no mentor. There's nobody who knows how the world works who would say you should ever ever ever put a penalty on good behavior nor should you ever ever ever say good things about the behavior you don't want to see more of. It's very simple human nature that people will do more of the things that they get praised for and less of the things they don't get praised for.

So and I'm going to talk about this a little bit more in a minute. Paul Graham, famous investor Paul Graham, asked this of a tweet. He said I wonder if the protesters in Portland et cetera realize that roughly a hundred percent of the effect they're having, the protest that is, on the upcoming presidential election is to help Trump. That's weird isn't it? Don't you wonder why the protesters are so obviously helping Trump because they're playing right into his message? At the same time he would be their biggest problem. The person they would most want to leave. How does that make sense? How does it make sense that every day that they're putting lots of personal risk and energy and money into getting Trump reelected? How can you explain that?

Here's how I explain it. They need Trump to get reelected. Not all of them. You know a lot of the protesters are legitimately just protesting racism and that's great. But in terms of the organizer class which are really the ones that make it happen, right? There most people are just attendees. Most people are followers. There's a small group of people, let's call them the organizing class, that make it all happen. Among the organizing class do they want to overthrow the government or do they want Joe Biden to be president? They want to overthrow the government. They don't want Joe Biden to be president. You don't see the protesters carrying Joe Biden signs do you? Do you see any of the protesters with Biden signs? You don't because they don't want Joe Biden to win. Do you know why? Because if Joe Biden wins it takes the steam out of their protests, takes the energy out of the revolution. The worst thing that could happen from this perspective of Black Lives Matter is for Joe Biden to get elected because the moment he gets elected the people who are protesting are going to say we got something. You know we didn't get everything we want but at least now Joe Biden will head us in the right direction and Kamala Harris. They'll be moving us toward a better world. Thank God this Trump is gone. They don't want that world. I'm pretty sure the organizers would prefer the perfect situation would be a non-credible election where Trump wins and stays in office and then they can complain that it was a rigged election. It was not credible. Trump is still the problem. Nothing's been fixed. We have to overthrow the system. So watch for the protesters to be very unenthusiastic about Biden for that reason.

Dan Bongino points out that it is incredible that it's been confirmed that the FBI used the suspected Russian agent to spy on a Trump campaign and it's not a front page story. Think about that. Just try to imagine this as not a front page story that the FBI actually used a Russian agent to spy on the suspected Russian agent to spy on the Trump campaign and it's just sort of ignored.

Now if you think you live in a world where you form your own opinions, you know you look at the news you form your own opinions, you don't. I don't know if that world ever existed but it definitely doesn't exist now. What happens is you are shown a little sliver of the news that is designed to give you the opinion that is being assigned to you. If they showed you more than the sliver of news you might get too much context and you would not accept the assigned opinion because you might say well I see your point but what about all this other stuff? As long as they just leave out all the other stuff they can give you a sliver of reality.

Context —

You'll say looks good to me. If I don't know anything else I just know that sliver my opinion has been assigned to me. I accept it. By the way on a more concerning note Dan Bongino noted publicly that he's got some kind of a lump on his neck that seems to be a concern and maybe a big concern. We don't know yet. So wishing him the best on that. I will add this story just if it makes Dan feel any b…

Next segment → →