One moment, one moment. Don't go anywhere. I'll be back. And here I am. Well, everybody, good morning. Good morning. The simultaneous sip will be coming in a moment, but first, the first item of the day. Are you ready? I have some suggestions for how to know what to trust, because we live in a world where sometimes you can't trust everything you hear, can't trust everything you see. And I made a list of eight things you should no longer trust. And here's the list.

Never trust, number one, scientists signing a letter. Scientists don't need to communicate by poll. They don't need to communicate by signing a letter. If science is real, they might publish some papers, they might give some talks, maybe some interviews, but one thing they usually don't do is sign a letter. So if you see scientists getting together to sign a letter, that's case in point. The Lancet article in which a bunch of scientists were duped into signing something that said, well, there's no way that virus could be coming from a lab, must be a naturally occurring virus. So don't trust anything that scientists sign a letter about.

Number two, don't trust any video clip if it involves Trump. Now most video clips can be edited maliciously, and maybe sometimes you could believe some, but don't believe any video about Trump. Do you know that yesterday there was a big, big controversy about whether Trump was wearing his pants backwards? That's right. Much of the news cycle, well not so much the news cycle but the social media, was obsessed by a video that appeared to show Trump wearing his pants backwards because the fly area was blank. Well it turns out that when you look at the still photography from that same moment, he has his pants on correctly and there's a fly there and everything's fine. But if you believed the video, well, you violated rule number two. Don't believe any video about Trump.

Number three, don't believe any complicated prediction models. Do you know why you shouldn't believe any complicated prediction models? Because they're complicated prediction models. And if there's one thing you can't trust, it's a complicated prediction model. Sometimes they might be right, but you don't know when that time is going to be. You don't know if you're looking at one that's going to be right. How do you know? It's just a complicated prediction model. So don't trust those. Even when they're right.

Don't believe any graph or chart on Twitter, because Twitter is not exactly the place you put your good information. Twitter is the place you take a chart without the source, slap it up there without any context whatsoever, and claim you found causality. Don't believe any chart or graph on Twitter.

Number five, don't believe anything written by a journalist. I know it's a problem because most of your news is written by a journalist, so it's kind of a problem if you can't believe the people who report the news. But let me say this clearly: don't believe the people who report the news. That would be crazy. There might have been a time when that made sense. I don't know for sure. Maybe it made sense when I was a kid. I don't know. You know, maybe they were lying too and we just never found out. But in 2021, if you believe something because you read it and it was written by a journalist, that's not good thinking. You should check yourself on that.

Number six of things you should not believe in 2021: never believe any claim made by a government. Any government. Your government, your enemy's government, your ally's government. Governments are not in the business of telling the truth. It's not even what they do. It's like saying, hey, my lawnmower is failing to fly. Yeah, yeah, your lawnmower can't fly because it's not really meant for that. Your government is not meant to tell you the truth. It's really not even, I don't know if you looked at a list of what they do for you, I'll bet telling you the truth wouldn't be on the list. You're defending the homeland, that's on the list. Yeah, yeah, lots of stuff is on the list, but telling you the truth, it's not even on the list. It's not even in the Constitution. Find in the Constitution the part about telling the truth. It's not there, right? It's not even an expectation.

Here's the seventh thing you should not believe in the year 2021: data. Data, because data is usually wrong. If the topic is interesting, the data is probably wrong. If the topic is boring and uninteresting and maybe unimportant, well, data might be right. But as soon as the topic is important, people take sides, the data gets fudged. Don't believe data. Now that's not to say all data is wrong. Of course some of it is right. But don't just believe it. That's a bad take