Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 9, 2026
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rst true thing they said. What the hell are all the people who have been deluged by fake news for four years, what are they supposed to think? They just reflexively say if CNN says that it can't be true because they have a whole four years of knowing that that's the pattern. Don't expect people to break pattern. It's hard to do. Somebody says but it isn't true. It is a low risk. Well it can be a…

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s little experiment you'll be able to more easily recognize that you might be in it in some future time when I don't tell you you're in it. I'm telling you you're in it right now. You can depend on the fact you will experience confirmation bias on this name repeating thing. It's going to happen.

All right, that's all for now. I'll talk to you tomorrow. And those of you on YouTube you have another minute or so of me. So even the story about the representative Cindy Johnson. Cindy Johnson is the name of one of my classmates when I grew up. You know, a prom, sort of a big name in my childhood was Cynthia Johnson and that's the name in the news again. It's confirmation bias but it's funny.

Somebody says are Trump supporters smart enough to know lies from facts? Let me give you a definitive answer to that. Nobody is. There's nobody who's smart enough. If people could tell the difference between lies and facts there wouldn't be lies or at least nobody would lie to smart people but they do. Now nobody, nobody can tell the difference. And here's the way to know if you're stupid. There is a way. If you think the other side is the stupid side that's how you know you're the stupid one. Because if you were smart you would know that whatever is going on on your side is definitely happening on the other side too and vice versa. Whatever is happening with Democrats that makes them unable to see simple truth is clearly, obviously, definitely happening with Republicans and with independents and with humans because it's a human thing. It has nothing to do with politics. You know being a Trump supporter doesn't make you dumb. Being dumb doesn't make you a Trump supporter. It doesn't work that way. People are just dumb and people are in different groups and you're going to find some dumb people in every group. But the way you can know you're dumb is to think it's the other side that's dumb. The moment you tell yourself it's the other side that's dumb and my side got it figured out you have identified yourself absolutely as a dumb person. There's no way around that. If you want one of the few rules in life that you could depend on, you know something that has a hundred percent predictive value because very few things do, right? Most things are like well maybe probably whatever. But you could say with a hundred percent certainty that if you believe you were lucky and you got on the smart side, God lucky I joined the smart team, I'm on the Democrats or I'm on the Republicans, thank goodness I'm not like those guys. As soon as you say that you are the dumb one. Guaranteed. Guaranteed you're the dumb one.

Now if you

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say to yourself we're all being fed fake news and the people who are consuming one kind of fake news fall for a certain set of lies, the people consuming another set of fake news are likely to fall for another set of lies, then you might be smart. That would be an indication of somebody who might be smart. But if you think it's only the other team that's dumb, maybe a little self-examination would…

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