Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas
Episodes Episode #1531 Segments
MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 1531 Scott Adams - Now!

Context —

my opinion, because obviously a lot of you disagree, in my opinion the government needs to take control in military matters and maybe a big crisis like this. Did they do it well? That's a separate question. But I think it's your best bet. Now I'll accept that you disagree with me on that, but it's only good if the people can take it back. The people need to regain it, you know, grab it back. And o…

← Previous segment →

imulation. Here's why. Because there's nobody else buying food. If this is a simulation, I'm the only one buying food and everything else is an illusion, right? So the NPCs don't buy food. They just look like it when you're shopping. They look like they're buying food but as soon as you leave they empty the carts and put it all back on the shelves. So here's my point. If the simulation has a bug, the only thing that's going to be missing is the food that you buy because it's your simulation. The generic food that's the background food that you'll never buy is just there to create scenery. It never changed and there was no bug in it. So the only thing changed was your specific food.

Now I'm not too serious. Jen says, oh my God, Scott, where is your brain gone? Simulation theory is such an illusion. Now Jen, do you know that Elon Musk has the same opinion I do about the simulation? And the actual scientists and philosophers who know what they're talking about do. It's accepted science in the sense that it's accepted as a serious alternative understanding of reality. Doesn't mean it's true, but it is completely accepted by smart people as, well, maybe. All right.

By the way, I just did that one for fun. I'm not too serious about the supply chain thing. Trump has said some new provocative things about Arizona which I will not tell you are true. Okay, so I'm going to tell you a bunch of things that Trump says but don't imagine that I say any of this is true. Is that clear? I don't know that it's untrue. I don't have an opinion on it, true or untrue. But we'll talk about it in a moment. So these are Trump's claims. Talking about a couple of precincts in Pima, Pima, Arizona. And apparently there are great irregularities there, Trump and others have claimed. And Trump says they overplayed their hand and got caught. Two precincts in Pima had over 100% turnout for mail-in ballots, which is impossible. And 40 precincts had over 97% returned, which is basically impossible. And that if you add these things together, the irregularities is more than the amount, enough the margin to win. Turnout rates of 99 and 100% is what you get in a third world country, blah blah blah. So and he shows a graph in his statement. Now the graph that he showed to demonstrate that there was a certain time of night when all the ballots turned in a different direction, I think it was Dr. Shiva's analysis.

So here's my question. Why is Trump complaining about Arizona irregularities and not using information that came from the Arizona audit? Wasn't the Arizona audit on his side? What am I missing in the story? Can somebody connect the dots for me? How could it be that Dr. Shiva has this solid, incontrovertible evidence that Trump is putting forward now? How could Dr. Shiva have that but the people who were certainly looking for that, the Arizona audit, they didn't have that? They didn't have that or they didn't believe it enough to put that forward as a claim. A different county? Is that why? Was it so, so Pima wasn't part of the Maricopa audit? Okay, that's the answer. Thank you.

Remember I was telling you yesterday that this model that we have where I talk out loud and you correct me in real time, it is effectively like a different form of intelligence. Because in real time you just basically fixed my brain because I was, I couldn't connect why there was a disconnect there. It was just a different county. So that's the answer. Okay.

Now if you didn't know anything except what I just told you, and that describes most of us, if you didn't know anything but what I just told you, Trump makes these claims. Dr. Shiva seems to be the source of some part of it and it claims more than, you know, something close to 100% turnout which would be impossible. How credible are these claims? Go. Don't tell me whether they're true or false because you don't know. We don't know if they're true or false. We don't know if true or false had changed the election. Only is it credible, meaning is that the kind of thing you would be inclined to believe because of its nature and maybe the source and everything you know about life? Credible or not credible? I'm just looking at your answers and I see not. Interestingly, I thought most of you are going to say yes. I really thought you were going to say yes. Interesting. I'm kind of shocked. I'm blown away. So I think most of you are good with the difference between what is credible versus what is true. Often you can't know what's true but you can tell if the claim is credible.

All right, so some of you think it's credible, some of you think it's not. I told you at the beginning of the process of the election and the audits that 95% of everything you see about a claim of irregularity, without even knowing what the claims would be before they even happened, I told you 95% would be bunk. Was I right? How was my prediction that 95% of the specific claims, not the general idea that there was a fraud, I'm not talking about the general idea, I'm talking about specific claims. I said 95% of them would be false, maybe 100%, but then at least 95% of them would be false. How close was I? One of my best predictions. Because no matter what you think about whether the election was fair or not overall, would you agree with me at this point that the specific claims have 90, 95, well you could say 100%, been debunked? True, true or not? I think that's one of my best predictions of all time. Because again I'm the only person saying that that I know of. I can't think of anybody else who said no, 95% of everything you hear is going to be wrong.

He only provided data not claims. How are you measurin

Context —

g this? I'm not measuring it with any science. I'm just saying that I haven't seen any claims that have been confirmed yet. So predicting that 95% of them or more would not be confirmed seems to be pretty close to the mark. No. All right, so let's keep an eye on that. That's kind of fun. There's something happening here that's really interesting. Now I might, I think some of you are going to ima…

Next segment → →