wer makes a difference? Like actually it goes back to its ready state. Are you telling me the capacitors can't be drained upon turning it off? They're not quick-draining capacitors, if that's a thing. So it's funny that your answers are all over the place. And that's something we all do, don't we? Don't we all unplug things and replug them in and we're all wondering if we've waited long enough?

I can't tell you how many times I've done that and said, okay that didn't fix the problem. Is it because I didn't wait long enough? And I don't think it ever is. I don't think it's ever been that when I went back and waited longer and unplugged it for longer that was actually the solution. I can't remember a time that that made a difference.

Anyway, here's a mind blower that I don't know enough about yet. So James Rosen wrote an essay for RealClear News and they're drawing on newly declassified information about the Watergate scandal. And here's sort of the summary. I haven't dug into it but I retweeted it so you can do it if you want to. Apparently Watergate was, wait for it, wait for it, apparently Watergate was fake news. And I think it's actually probably true that it was fake news. Now not that there wasn't a burglary, not that Nixon wasn't involved, but that the context was that the CIA was behind some part of it. And now we know that. So if that's true, and apparently we have this new information that says it's true plus there was some older information that is being taken more seriously, but if that's true then everything we understand about that is different.

And the context would change from Nixon is a monster and he got caught and then we got rid of him to Nixon was a victim of the deep state that took him out. That's a pretty big change. They can't both be true. Or could they? Well they can't both be true exclusively. So think about that. The most basic foundational political story in American history, you know beyond the Civil War I suppose, the most foundational modern story in American history is probably fake news.

Now how many of you knew that? I always suspected but I wouldn't say I knew it. But I always wondered if it was real. I always wondered. And the reason I wondered is because everything today is not real, right? Everything today is not real. Almost all coverage today is so biased and distorted that you don't even know how they'll write the history of it because it's like there are two histories happening at the same time. How would you write that history? Was Trump a monster or did he have a good first term? Who writes that? How do you decide what the history book says?

So I always had my suspicions about it. But here's the great thing about this. If it turns out that this is true, that Watergate was largely fake news, then this thing that we're learning is, fill in the blanks, worse than Watergate. Thank you. It's worse than Watergate, right? If Watergate was a hoax in large part — you know, not the basic idea that there was a burglary, that seems to be true — but if it was largely completely distorted in terms of who was doing what to whom and why, it is worse than Watergate.

And who would be the people who are famous for writing the story? See, checking notes, it would be the guys who are calling everything Trump does worse than Watergate.

I would like to remind you of something that Elon Musk tweeted not too long ago and is quite compatible with my own thinking and also compatible with us being a simulated environment. And the idea is that reality will tend toward what is most entertaining for the observers. Not the people in the story but the observers. Did Watergate trend in the direction that was most entertaining by becoming our standard? Literally the way we describe things as being bad as worse than Watergate. What would be the most entertaining way to cap that off? To find out that Watergate itself was never real. At least the way it was told to us wasn't real. It's the most entertaining outcome. So there you go.

I'm going to put together maybe a list of how to predict things. So this would be one of them. So follow the money would be the highest, most predictable way to predict the future. Follow the money. But another one would be that all the news is fake. You know that would be one way to predict. Because the next thing you hear — let me make that prediction — the next big story, whatever it is, and I don't even know what it would be, is going to be at least fake news for half of the country. I mean maybe the other half gets something closer to real, but you could predict it today. So predicting that the next story, whatever it is, is fake is a pretty good prediction because it would be compatible with the past.

So other ways are the Adam's law of slow-moving disasters. The idea that these big problems that seem unsolvable, we've had quite a few of them and we keep solving them and we'll probably keep doing it. Because usually these big unsolvable end-of-the-world problems are a failure of imagination. In other words we can't imagine how we'd solve it therefore we say we can't. But we also can't imagine anything about the future. I mean not accurately. You can't accurately imagine the future. If you could you'd be magic. So the fact that you can't accurately figure out how climate change could be solved for example, it doesn't mean it won't be. It just means you can't imagine it. But you know what else you can't imagine? Everything else. Everything else.

Here's another way to predict the future: we'll be fine. That's one of the best filters on the future because that filter understands that the news focuses on the most dangerous, provocative ideas. But if you know that the news is telling you the scariest version then you can say, oh we'll be fine. Now being scared of what's coming is part of being f