Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive July 10, 2026
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Back to episode — Episode 1264 Scott Adams - All the News That's Fit to Sip. Get in Here.

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o of them, a hundred thousand views. Now in terms of viewers, probably there'll be a hundred thousand of them by the end of the day. Right now it's views, but there'll probably be that many viewers. And I thought to myself, I wonder if these guys know that they just went international. They literally were being streamed all over the planet with just this little thing in my hand and a good cell si…

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in the context, maybe they have something. If what they're doing is looking for the one correct narrative, that's worse. Can we agree on that?

If it turns into a Wikipedia-like narrative-telling situation where there's one truth that comes out of it, that's worse. If it shows both sides and doesn't try to play favorites, just hey, here's the argument, make up your own mind, that's better. Because if somebody tweets something, let's say they believe something they saw on CNN, and I put a comment on it in our current model without this new feature, who's going to see it? Right? The people I want to persuade or inform, not likely they're going to see it.

But what would happen if I made the best argument against the tweet that I thought was a wrong narrative or interpretation? Well, if I make a really good counterpoint, the odds of my counterpoint floating up to the top should improve, right? Because it's a good counterpoint. Other people see it. They say, yeah, that's what I would say. He's saying this the way I would say it. So I have some optimism for this feature, but I'll acknowledge there's a million ways it could go wrong.

All right. Somebody's building a face mask that has a COVID test indicator built into the face mask. So I think something would change color based on the droplets coming out of your mouth all day. Eventually they might build up to the point where it could measure them. And I said to myself, if we can do that, shouldn't we have rapid tests already? If you can build that technology into a mask, you can't just put it in a pack of gum and sell it to me over the counter?

And if the problem is that the mask would be, let's say, a lower sensitivity than a proper COVID test, then don't

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you have a problem with the FDA? The whole problem with the rapid tests is that they're lower by design. They're lower sensitivity. And that's the problem. The FDA doesn't want low sensitivity tests out there even if they would be more useful than high sensitivity tests because you could do them in volume. So I don't think this thing about the mask having the test built into it, I don't think tha…

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