Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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wn onto everything. Could we go like a minute without something anti-Semitic happening in the comments on YouTube? Like just one minute. Like you don't have to say it on every story, right? We get it. We get it. I'm completely aware of your opinion. You just, it's just boring now. All right, you're not adding anything to the story except badness. All right. Here's what I think would be a hilariou…

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esident ever. And if I were 25 and I had, let's say, forty thousand dollars of student debt and he said there's a 10% chance I might be able to clear that debt, do you know how to calculate the value of that? That's a straight expected value calculation. You say to yourself, well, it's a forty thousand dollar loan, but there's only a 10% chance that Biden will make it go away. So you've multiplied the 10 times the forty thousand gets you four thousand dollars. Four thousand dollars is the value of buying into it, the conceptual value. So if you were a rational voter, you'd probably vote for Biden because it's free money or it looks like there's a chance of it. But Trump is offering nothing. Trump is not saying I have another way to handle this. He's offering nothing. And same with the other candidates. Imagine if you will that totally tongue-in-cheek, although he plays it straight, Trump says he's going to tax the liberal colleges to pay off all the student loans. Now the first thing you should ask yourself is, would that work? No, of course not. No, that wouldn't work. It wouldn't work even a little bit. You know what else it wouldn't work? The thing that Biden's doing. Biden's plan isn't going to work, but it works for votes, doesn't it? It totally works for votes. It's just not going to work in the real world like people get money and stuff. So if Trump came up with a total plan that everyone knew was, that's the funny part. Like you know it's just Trump being Trump and just promising more than maybe he could deliver. Although Trump doesn't actually intentionally promise more than he can deliver. I think he does actually try to build a wall. It just didn't happen. Whereas I think Biden is, he knows he's lying. Like I can't read his mind, but it's hard to imagine that he thought it would work when nobody else in the world thought it would work. So I don't know. Maybe he was the one person who believed it. Maybe so.

What do you think about the idea of saying that the colleges that caused the problem should be responsible for paying it off over time, not all at once but maybe paid off over time? Now some people say but they would just raise their prices, to which I say it's a free market. They can do whatever they want. And that other people could say I'll just use AI instead. Elon Musk tweeted today that the value of college is diminishing. So if you've got the smartest, richest person in the world who's saying in public the value of college is pretty questionable, I think we may reach a big turning point here. Because it's not until people like Elon Musk say college is not essential that it becomes true. It's not true until people like him say it, right? It's got to be your employer who says it. If your employer says it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter. That he's a gigantic employer with also influence on other employers, so that's real. When Musk says that, it gets real. And he means it. You know, he's not joking. Yeah, and Harvard has their big endowment, etc.

All right. There's a report, I don't know if it's true. Benny Johnson had breaking news on this that he says the photos have leaked of Michelle Obama currently vacationing on a massive private yacht on a private island in Greece at the same time the Obamas were tweeting about the unfairness of the Supreme Court decision to disallow affirmative action. So she was on a yacht when she was complaining about how bad things are for black people in America. She was on a yacht, literally on an actual literal yacht. Like a real yacht, not conceptually, you know, not theoretically. She was actually on the yacht. A real yacht. Now this gave me the idea to suggest a new feature for Twitter that I'd like to see. I don't know if you do it technologically, but what I'd like to see is some kind of feature on Twitter that says that the tweeter was on a yacht when they sent the tweet. Because I'd like to know when the tweeter is drunk. You know, I'd love to see a breathalyzer before you can tweet. But I'd also like to know if the person is on a yacht. And I saw somebody suggest that there could be an icon for a little hypocrite on a yacht. I have a laughing all morning. What would that look like? What would the icon of a hypocrite even look like? Would it be Michelle Obama? It would just be a little icon of a yacht and Michelle Obama and that would be hypocrite on a yacht. I don't know why that's so funny. Yeah, Scott had a lot. At least it rhymes better. But hypocrite would be a hilarious icon. Hypocrite. All right. You can use that in so many ways.

Fox News has a couple of summer stories where they misinterpret somebody and make a big story. Who are they misinterpreting today? Something about the New York Times. New York Times had another story. They listed the various ways you could get out of student debt and one of the ways was dying. So I think Fox News is trying to act like the New York Times thinks that dying is a way to get out of your debt or something like that. Somehow they turned that into a story of outrage. It's definitely your summer stories. And then there was some state politician who said the suburbs. So now Fox News is going to be outraged about the suburbs. Now of course when you hear it in context it's more about they need to do something in the cities. She's not saying she doesn't care about the suburbs. But you know that's the way it'll be taken. So Fox News in the summers, there's just no, there's not enough hard news. So there's this whole industry of misinterpreting people's comments. I might be a little bit sensitive to that. I wonder why.

All right. I hear a lot of stuff about RFK Jr.'s voice and people are saying well that's going to hold it back. Now I think what will hold it back is his policy preferences. But let's talk about his voice. In my opinion politicians have two kinds of voices: commanding and pleading. And I believe that you can tell them when you hear them. And I'll give you some examples. Trump is a commanding voice. He's never pleading. He's commanding. Would you agree? Adam Schiff. What is Adam Schiff? Is he a commanding voice or a pleading voice? Pleading, right? How about Swalwell? Is Swalwell a commanding voice or a pleading voice? He's a pleading voice. How about Nancy Pelosi? Now Nancy Pelosi has, you know, with age she has her own shaky voice problems. Does she have a commanding voice or a pleading voice? She has a commanding voice. Nancy Pelosi has a commanding voice even though her voice is weak with age. The words that she chooses and the command which she puts into it is very evident. She has a commanding voice.

Now I'll give you a few more. See if you can get them right. Chris Christie. Tell me, is Chris Christie a commanding voice or a pleading voice? Commanding or pleading? Chris Christie. The answer is pleading. A lot of you are trying to substitute whining but I'm going to use pleading for all of that category of whining and complaining. All right, here's another one. Vivek Ramaswamy. Commanding or pleading? Commanding or pleading? It's Vivek Ramaswamy. Commanding. Absolutely commanding, right? Somebody said Josh Hawley. Josh Hawley has a commanding voice but don't be confused with the tone of his voice. What Josh Hawley has is a tonality that suggests command. That's actually not what I'm talking about because when I say Nancy Pelosi has a commanding voice it's not about her deep resonance. It's that the things she says and the sort of attitude she puts into it is commanding, right? And so Vivek is commanding. How about DeSantis? Ron DeSantis. Commanding or pleading? Commanding or pleading? Ron DeSantis. Pleading. Yeah, he has a pleading style. Now I'm not saying he's not a good executive or a good leader. He seems to be very good. Very good. All right. How about Mike Pence? Mike Pence. Commanding or pleading? Mike Pence. Pleading. Yeah, he's a pleader. All right. So now that you have the pleaders versus the commanders. Kamala Harris. Commanding or pleading? That was easy. That's pleading. All right. Now that you can see the pleaders versus the commanders, RFK Jr. Commanding or pleading? Commanding or pleading? RFK Jr. Yeah, his voice is commanding.

So here's what everybody's getting wrong. Number one, nobody ever talks over RFK Jr. You haven't noticed that, have you? When do you notice it? He's the only person in politics who will never get talked over. People stop. They lean in and they listen to every word and they wait until he's done. They wait until he's done and then they ask another polite question. That is as commanding as a voice can be. I would argue that he might have, with Trump, you know Trump's a singular character, but RFK Jr. has as commanding a voice as Trump. It's not the same. You know, good sound. It's not a Josh Hawley booming baritone but it's commanding as hel

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l. It's completely commanding. So if you've missed that you've missed the story of his voice. The story of his voice is not that it sounds like Katharine Hepburn because so does Nancy Pelosi and she's commanding as hell, right? You wish you could be as commanding as she is. So it's not, it's definitely not gender. You know I'm trying to make sure you can see it's not gender and it's not quality of…

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