Back to episode — Episode 1423 Scott Adams - Brains Versus Cowardice Versus Studies Versus Doctors. Come Sip.
Context —
a published study and learning how to read it correctly or analyze it or be critical. So those are the people who are telling you what to believe. People you believe are qualified but have never even taken the courses. Who would you trust? Somebody like Andreas and somebody with an economics background who has studied, you know, at least could look at data and studies and know if at least the mat…
← Previous segment →velop something like a pre-immunity. Meaning that if you check them for antibodies maybe you wouldn't find them the way you're expecting to find them, but that your body has been warned essentially. Basically it's been prepped by tiny little exposures but not enough to make you sick because you're out in the sun and you're outdoors and maybe you get a little whiff of it from passing somebody.
So my hypothesis is herd immunity but not measurable. Meaning that if you measured antibodies in the normal way you just wouldn't find it. But that there's something about the micro exposure that preps some bodies in a way that may be as hard to detect, to just be a little bit more alert for this specific problem. And it just gets on it faster. Because that could be it. It could be nothing more than some bodies are responding faster.
Now I suppose the other possibility is that some people have natural immunity to anything and that herd immunity doesn't really have to be 70. Maybe it needs to be 35 and we've never been right about herd immunity. That's the other possibility. Somebody says nope, no Nobel for you. All right, well that's — I'm going to stick with that hypothesis that it has to be something about your bodies prepping but not in a way that we can detect. All right, that'll probably take 10 or 20 years for me to get that Nobel Prize, but I'm patient. I can wait.
I would like my critics to make up their minds. My critics call me a coward sometimes. They call me a coward for saying that face masks work in some situations, and that I am a coward for taking that position. But at the same time, the fact that I got a vaccination with this so-called risky experimental vaccine makes me foolhardy. So I am simultaneously a coward about masks at the same time I should be much more afraid but I'm not about vaccines. So could my critics make up their mind? Am I a coward or am I foolhardy? Because I can't be both. And if you're going to criticize me, at least be consistent, will you? Am I foolhardy or am I a coward? Please make up your mind.
Well, I would like to add this. If you would like to find who the dumbest people in the world, they're the ones who call anybody a coward for a risk management decision. All of us are making risk management decisions. All of us are trying to make the decision that lowers our risk. If you're trying to make decisions that lower your risk based on incomplete data and the best you can do about making your guess, are you a coward or are you like every person in the world with every decision for every year, every minute of the whole civilization? All of your decisions, yours, mine, everybody's decisions are comparing risks. That's everybody all the time with every decision.
If your best analysis is that somebody was a coward, you're an idiot. And I hate to be the first to tell you, you don't know how to analyze anything. You're just an idiot if that's your filter on life. It's like, oh this one's a coward. He got a vaccine. He's so afraid. He's so afraid of the coronavirus. Or he's wearing a mask because it's the law. He must be a coward. What kind of a coward is he? Please. If your best analytical approach is calling somebody a coward because they made a different risk management decision than you did, don't talk in public. Please don't ever talk in public. You do not have the brains to say things out loud. At the very least talk in terms of risk management. Perhaps you have a different opinion of the risk.
Let's say you're one of these people like Styx and Hexenhammer or 666 who apparently has decided that the risk of getting the vaccine is higher than the risk of getting the coronavirus. Is he right? What do you think? Is Styx and Hexenhammer or 666 on Twitter — a lot of you know him, very reasonable guy, right? If you've watched the show you know he's very reason-based, very rational. Is that the right decision? How the would you know? How the would you know if the risk of getting the vaccination is higher in the long run than not getting it? You don't know that.
Now I made a decision, but is it because I know that my risk management is right? No, no. Am I going to tell you that Styx and Hexenhammer 666 got it wrong? No, no. How the would I know? Do you know how much the risk of the variants that are caused by the vaccination, the long-term effects of the vaccination? Somebody says he's right, Paul. You don't know if he's right. You couldn't know that. Nobody. Einstein couldn't know that. All the smartest people in the world can't know that. It's unknowable. One hundred percent unknowable. But you still have to make a decision, right?
So I made a decision based on a number of variables. And one of the variables was that it would free me up to travel and not have to wear a mask and stuff. Now, did I make the correct decision to get the vaccination? How the would I know? It's impossible to know. Nobody has enough information about the future to know which way is right.
I'll tell you what I was influenced by. I was influenced by the fact that apparently most side effects happen early. So I had waited a number of months and I saw how many side effects there seemed to be compared to how many people got the vaccination. And it looked like most side effects happen early. There weren't that many compared to what I saw as the risk of the coronavirus. Am I right? Is that an accurate or useful analysis? How the would I know? It's unknowable, right? I do know it made me feel better, right?
So whoever says, John, you're dead wrong — everybody who has certainty about the risks of vaccination versus the risk of not vaccination, all the people with certainty are idiots. You're just idiots. I'm sorry. And you should not watch this live stream anymore. You're not smart enough to watch this live stream. You could be confident that you made the right decision for yourself. That would be fair. You could be confident that there are certain types of risks you're not comfortable with but maybe other kinds that you are. Oh, that would be fair. That would be a reasonable decision. But if you say to yourself you're dead wrong to get the vaccination or you're dead wrong not to get the vaccination, you're an idiot. There's no way around that. That's like a brain that doesn't work. You can't know what was the right decision. You just have to take your best shot at it.
If I'm wrong and let's say I get a horrible disease from the vaccination — I'm not expecting that, but let's say I do — would you then say, well Scott, I told you? Well if you do, you're an idiot because you didn't know. You got lucky. Somebody's going to be right. Somebody in the long run will look more right than somebody else. It's not because you knew. You don't know. You're guessing.
All right, so get over yourself. If you're confident that you're positive about vaccinations, you're an idiot because nobody should be confident about this at all. At all.
All right, maybe I've taken that too far. Here's what Queen of the Universe Elect says on Twitter to my points about this. She said about masks and about vaccination, she says both are evidence of your cowardice. You were so afraid of the pandemic, the pandemic, that you got the risky vaccine. It wasn't out of foolhardiness, it was out of cowardice. This fear is so deep that you believe we should all be forcibly vaccinated to protect you. It's very sad.
No, I don't believe you should all be forcibly vaccinated to protect me. Do you know why I got the vaccination? I don't need you to be vaccinated. So opposite. Opposite of that. I'm unafraid because I'm vaccinated. Was I ever afraid of masks? No. I just didn't like them, you know, for a variety of obvious reasons. Yeah. So it's a mind reading and it's someone who is sure that my bravery and my cowardice are exactly the same thing. This is people who imagine they can think but they really can't. These are really, really dumb people who have certainty about this.
Okay, so don't be the certain person. You could be for vaccinations or against them. That's fine. I think you could make an argument either way. But don't be certain. Don't be that perso
Context —
n. All right. There's a study that says that the COVID can destroy your penis. So there's a study that found that people had recovered, still had COVID in their penis. And at least a few cases, not enough to be statistically relevant yet, but anecdotally there are some people who seem to have become impotent after getting the coronavirus and it's still in their penis. Now the doctors haven't bee…
Next segment → →