Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 24, 2026
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y he said aggressively, clearly and immediately the opposite of what was reported. That's really different than oh he has said before he disavowed them so you should take that as true. That's the weakest not quite accurate defense. But at the very least, at the least Maher knows he's being gaslit on this topic. That's progress. That's a little bit of progress. Not nearly the entire story was rever…

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're not science right?

So along the not science level. So let's say that the person knows they're lying and so their vitals go crazy and then the operator says well yeah the machine has caught deception. Would you like to modify that statement? And then the person's like maybe I can say something that's not exactly admitting it but maybe I can beat the machine. And then they try to lie a little bit more and then the operator says okay that was an obvious lie. It appears that you're sending all the signals of lying. And then you just watch the person how they react.

So the idea is to convince somebody that they've been caught lying and then they'll maybe confess. But if you walked in knowing that that's how it works, if you put me in the machine it wouldn't matter what the machine said. If the operator said to me oh it's going crazy I say what would you expect when you use something that's not based on science and you put my life at risk with the machine that you know is not even allowed in court because it's not reliable? If that thing gives you the wrong indication you're going to go tell people I'm guilty.

You think I'm going to say here all come and put up with this pseudoscience? Why don't you read my goddamn horoscope and decide if I should be in jail? All right so that's how my lie detector would go. I would attack the lie detector guy and I would make him defend his non-science and I'll put him on trial and I would tell him he's a liar. I'll say are you telling me this works? Well you know there's an indication. No does this work? Well you know many people have used it in many situations. No does this work? And he'd have to lie to me.

So I would actually make the lie detector guy lie to me and I would just say look this guy's a liar. Here's what he said. It's on tape because they would usually videotape the thing just in case. So you say look I've got him on tape lying. He says this works. We have a hundred years of science that says it doesn't work and this guy just told me it does. So you know you got a liar here. You're worried about my lie. This guy's on video lying.

All right so that could be a problem if they come up with an actual lie detector that works unlike the current models.

Hey let's talk about that Ukrainian offensive. So the name Victoria Nuland comes up in the news all the time mostly on social media it seems. And I hear all these accusations of her. What are the accusations? That she's I don't know neocon and she likes wars or something? Is that what we think?

All right so here's something Glenn Greenwald pointed out in a tweet. He said the U.S. began openly touting NATO's expansion into Ukraine in 2008 under Bush. That was when now CIA director Bill Burns wrote his memo warning that was a red line for all Russia not just Putin, all Russia, and would trigger war in Crimea and Donbas. And then Greenwald says guess who was the U.S. ambassador to NATO then? Victoria Nuland.

So Victoria Nuland was central to the NATO expansion in Ukraine and then was ambassador to Ukraine. Was she ambassador to Ukraine or U.N. ambassador? I don't know.

So here's what I know and what I don't know. What I know is her name comes up a lot when there's something sketchy about Ukraine or war or Russia. I don't have any personally, I don't have any specific accusations. Is there a specific accusation where people just think she's too hawkish? Is this sort of a generally too hawkish situation? I'm not exactly sure why she's being blamed but apparently she is.

A Russia expert. Which is a Russia expert? Do you know what I said was the cause of the war? Does anybody remember what I said was the cause of the war or the cause of our bad relations with Russia in general? In my opinion it's because we create too many Russia experts and the Russia experts have to do some Russia stuff and cause some Russian stuff to happen.

So I think we're creating the people who create the problem because they need to have a narrative. They need to justify their life's work. Imagine if we created these tens of thousands of Russia experts like Victoria Nuland and then we made peace with Russia and they became an ally. They all lose their jobs or they have to at least retool and maybe find a way to use those skills. But I think we're creating a system which guarantees war with Russia. And the system is we keep making Russia experts.

Now I'm not sure, I'm not saying we shouldn't have Russia experts but at some point if you've produced an abundance of Russia experts you can guarantee a war with Russia. Let me put it in a different way. If we had an unusual number of North Korea experts, do you think that more people go into the foreign services and become Russia experts or do more of them try to become North Korea experts?

Do you know why we're not at war with North Korea? Probably because we have not created enough North Korea experts to have something that

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they need to do with their life. Probably because if you're a Russia expert at least you get to visit Russia which could be cool. If you're a North Korean expert you're not even going to get to visit the place you're an expert at. So why would you even go into that line of work? Honestly I think Victoria Nuland might be part of my larger framework that we create too many people who have to make i…

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