Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas

Context —

the people who are trying to game it. But it's just so unethical it's almost hard to keep it in your head. Anyway there's this new book on Musk. It's a biography by Walter Isaacson. And Musk himself must be happy about it because I saw him sending a post in which he was recommending an interview with Walter Isaacson without even seeing it. Because he said everything that guy says is kind of inter…

← Previous segment →

rybody else. And they would just force people to do it. So he was one of the biggest forces for realistic diversity in entertainment at least and also the world. So he basically went to the mat against discrimination.

But there was another story that I hadn't heard until I watched this. So apparently at the time that Sinatra had moved to Palm Springs I think it was Palm Springs and other rich people wanted to spend some time there too. It was just a good place for rich people. But a lot of the rich Jewish actors and Hollywood people couldn't even join the big golf club in Palm Springs. I don't know how many there were but there was one big one that they would want to be a member of but they were not allowed. So they were rich enough they decided to start their own golf club so that all the Jewish members could play but it wouldn't be restricted. So you didn't have to be Jewish it's just that they wouldn't restrict anybody. So it ended up being lots of Jewish members.

Well Frank Sinatra who is not Jewish he actually moved his home onto the golf course so that Frank Sinatra was basically endorsing this new arrangement that was not discriminating against his friends. So if this club isn't going to let my friends in you're not going to see me there. And seeing Frank Sinatra was sort of a big deal. So he put the hammer down on two very notable situations in which he would not tolerate discrimination. And to me that was his greater accomplishments.

But this is not even why I was going to talk about it. I was going to talk about him because he was also a miserable drunk and apparently he was just terrible to people when he was drunk and he really liked to drink so it wasn't that uncommon. But when you watch the people talk about him they talked like they were seeing a god. It's like oh my god he was so nice. And apparently he did just incredible amount of charity work like for individuals but also for organizations. He did like just all kinds of charities. He said yes to everything. So he was in fact a genuine charitable guy who did things which I think could have changed history. I mean it might be that important. But he could also be a pretty mean guy.

So how do you handle the fact that somebody is sometimes terrible and sometimes an angel? And he could be both guys. It could be both people. And I think you have to keep that in mind when you're looking at any anybody like Bill Gates. So if you want to say that he's like pure evil that doesn't feel likely to me. That feels really unlikely. But if you told me that everything he does is noble and for the good of humanity I would say clearly not. Clearly not. But he could be both. He could be one of the most useful people to society and also an asshole. There's no competition there. He could be both.

I speak from personal experience. I like to do things that help the world but am I flawless? No obviously. All right people are complex. That's my only point.

Do you remember when Forbes the publication was a respectable publication? Oh my god I don't know what happened but oh my god. So there's an article here about how the richer more unethical than the poor. The rich are more unethical and immoral than the poor. It's in Forbes. This informed. And here are the examples without any believable data to back it. That the rich have lax attitude toward the rules so they're more prone to break laws while driving. Hinting at a belief that certain rules might not apply to them. Yeah because when I'm afraid of a crime for example I don't want to be around rich people. Yeah no. If you want to be free from crime go to the poorest part of the country because that's where people are morally strong. You can leave your door unlocked. Just go to any inner city. Just leave your door unlocked because there are no rich people there to take your stuff because they're all immoral. There's rich people.

The rich also according to the Forbes article, it's an opinion piece I guess, skewed ethical compasses. Yeah because that's something that the rich have but not the poor. They're inconsiderate. Yeah they're richer inconsiderate unlike the poor who just they're so considerate. And the rich have something called an overemphasis on winning whether in games or work. Yeah those stupid rich people they have an over emphasis on winning. So you wouldn't want any of that around you would you? Let me get away from those winners. My god.

Now do I even need to add commentary to this? This is Forbes and they're basically saying kill rich people indirectly. I mean all the rich people are the bad people so if you did something bad to a rich person well that would not even be immoral would it? Because they have it coming. They're all bad people. My god.

Do you think that the left is trying to kill Trump and Musk? Like actually kill them? I don't know if anybody's had a meeting where they said those words but if you were to judge by actions it looks like it. It looks exactly like it.

You know you want to hear here's my conspiracy theory. I'm going to give you the conspiracy theory of all conspiracy theories. I will not say that I believe my own conspiracy theory and therefore you should. But when a situation is created where we're led to a certain set of conclusions whether you like it or not. And the thing that's been bugging me for a long time is the UFO stories. And I've told you before that if I were in charge of let's say some massive brainwashing operation I would want to know if I could test when the public is ready for the big one. And the UFOs would be this nice little silly story that no matter which way it went it would just be kind of funny so it wouldn't hurt you. So you put this UFO story out and then you wait a few weeks and you see how many people believed it.

Now I don't know the answer to that. Can you tell me what percentage of the public believed the UFO story? Less than half. Not 25 but it was fewer than half was it not? Fewer than half believed it was true. I did a fact check on that. You're just guessing.

All right so here's my conspiracy theory. That if 75 percent of the country had believed the UFO story then the brainwashers in charge would know that we're ready for the big one. And the big one would be assassination. The big one would be assassination. And that because the UFO story was not bought hook line and sinker that they pulled back on the plan to kill Trump. And they may have the same plan for Musk for all I know. But now I'm not saying this is true. Not saying this is true. I'm just saying that if you remove any trust in media we're all left with our own devices. So we're all going to look for patterns and then we're going to think those patterns mean something. They don't. A lot of times the patterns are just accidental patterns.

But I'll tell you the pattern I see with the Forbes thing. This basically is trying to change the public's opinion of how much they think about the rich people. Now who do you think of when you think of rich people? Trump and Musk. Like they're defined by being rich people. So if you can make rich people look like they're the bad ones and you can make the public believe anything including UFOs you can just kill the rich people if they're in your way. And then you can tell the public that it was an accident and 75 will believe 25 won't believe but it's not enough to change it. The 25 was probably how many believe that Kennedy was killed by the CIA for most of my life. Probably 25 percent of the public thought the CIA killed Kennedy right? So that was enough that society did not rise up because 25 just isn't enough. 75 said let's just move on. Probably one gunman right?

So that's what scares me about the UFO story. It looks like it's

Context —

planted. It didn't look organic to me. And it looked like there would be some point to it. And the only other point I could think would be to scare China or Russia into thinking we have some technology that they don't know about. Maybe. I mean that's another plausible explanation. But it feels like a test to see if we're ready to believe literally anything. You would have to get us to Kennedy leve…

Next segment → →