Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 22, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas
Episodes Episode #1261 Segments
MainContent Confirmation Bias

Back to episode — Episode 1261 Scott Adams - Coffee Now!

Context —

ones really. If you're going to make a list of logical fallacies that would be in the top 10, that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, right? It's famous. It's literally a famous illogical thought. And it's the primary news. The reason that people are being banned on social media is not just claiming that they're sure that something was fraudulent but beyond that the people doing t…

← Previous segment →

oblems in the world if you were to look at like the really big ones it would be energy policy and then the related question of climate. But even if you didn't worry about the climate you would certainly think we need more energy, right? The world needs clean energy. There's no doubt about that.

So Elon Musk, you know he's got his electric cars, he's got his electric battery company. Tesla, the smart people think of it as, Adam Townsend I heard him say this so I bought a bunch of Tesla stock the minute I heard this because I think Adam Townsend said it, that you should think of Tesla as an energy company. If you think of it as a car company you're missing what it is. It's more of an energy company. And I thought to myself oh my god that's true and I bought the stock. It's up 130% now. I don't make stock recommendations so don't go and buy any stocks because I said this, right? This is not a stock recommendation thing and you shouldn't take any stock recommendations from people like me.

But the fact is that that insight is a big deal because our energy is the biggest challenge in the future probably. The other challenge is space. We have to get off the planet. And if the United States doesn't do it first whoever gets there first is going to own the planet. Because if you can control space you kind of control the planet because it's easier to drop things down than it is to shoot things up. Sort of a general statement. You want the high ground. So I'm oversimplifying that but the point is whoever controls space is going to control the future.

So aren't you glad that Elon's on your side if you're either a democracy or an American? And that he's also putting up Starlink, these low Earth satellites that will blanket the Earth and be a secondary, well no secondary, but it'll be basically an internet system that's in the sky instead of wired. So what's that going to do for our freedom of speech? Well it kind of puts it in Elon's control a little bit because if he says you can be on his satellites well I guess you can. And fortunately for you he's pro freedom, pro free speech. So that makes me feel pretty comfortable that there'll be some kind of an alternative to the social media platforms and the common carriers that we have now.

So when you look at the size of the problems that he's taking on, or even his Boring Company, the B-O-R-I-N-G company where that bores holes in things, and then he's also turning humans into cyborgs. He's got the company where they'll put the little chip into your skull literally so you can control technology with your thoughts I guess. So if you look at the things he's doing they're literally save civilization things.

Now imagine this. Put yourself in his place. And this was my little bolt of lightning. This was my realization yesterday. You know in Spider-Man if you ever watch the Spider-Man movies there's this line where he says with great power comes great responsibility. That's sort of Elon Musk's problem right now. He can do things that other people can't do. He just did this 100 million dollar X Prize

Context —

kind of thing. It's not an X Prize but his own thing. He offered up to pay a hundred million dollars to whoever comes up with the best carbon capture technology. Who else did that? Like who else could have? Who else was smart enough? Who else knew that carbon capture technology is basically the only way to fix things? Did you know that? Did you know that there's basically no way to fix climate ch…

Next segment → →