Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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We shall now identify the fake news. Fake news identifier number one: When it says we're on course to end 2023 with one of the largest drops in homicides on record, what is missing from the story? What's missing from the story that's really really important? It's dropping down to the baseline from the pandemic levels. So it's not a drop from the baseline which would be really good news. It's a dro…

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y steals the television am I right? Because television isn't really worth that much and it's hard to carry. So they're not going to take my television. They probably wouldn't take a car out of the garage. They don't seem to do that. What are they going to steal? I own zero jewelry. I don't keep enough cash in the house. I basically have a wallet. The entire contents of my wealth that is transportable is my wallet and you could get that from anywhere. You know you don't have to do it in my house. So it's a funny crime. I think you need to make sure there's a woman in the house and it's a high income house so they'll have some jewels. But I got no jewels. Like literally none. I don't have a single thing you could put in your pocket that would have value or even anything you could put in a pillowcase. But that should be mentioned.

I've got a hypothesis for you. How many of you would say that you feel a human instinct to reproduce or have at any point in your life? How many of you have ever at any time in your life felt a human impulse which you knew was natural? Well I don't know if you know. I mean there's always a social part of it that you're socially hypnotized to reproduce but it feels natural. I have it as well even though I've never had biological children. I have at various times felt this impulse to have a biological child.

Now why do you think you have that impulse? Now obviously if evolution is true we evolved to reproduce because if we didn't have an impulse to reproduce we wouldn't do it as much and then we wouldn't even be here. So it's sort of built into us that we have a need to reproduce. But you know what's interesting about reproduction? Reproduction is really not about your own survival. It can work that way if your children need to take care of you in your old age but it's not really about that is it? When you think about having a child you're not thinking about your own survival. You're thinking about having a child. So what drives that?

Here's my hypothesis. That what drives it is the impulse for immortality. I think that all people believe, including me, we believe that if our mortal body were to expire but we left something of ourselves genetically in another human that could therefore also have more humans that we would be immortal in a sense. Would you agree?

So how many would accept my hypothesis without proof? But my hypothesis is that our instinct to reproduce has mostly to do with our own mortality mostly. And also I'd say narcissism. I think reproduction is narcissism. It's like you're so important you must produce more of yourself and it should go on even after your death because that's how important you are. Some of me must go on.

Now there are other reasons for wanting kids. You just like them a

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nd blah blah blah. You know plenty of other reasons. But I think the basic instinct is just about self-love. It's a form of self-love that just happens to have an external component to it, the child. Now whether or not you accept that hypothesis I'm going to extend it for those who do accept it. We now have AI that can take one photograph and animate it like a perfect deepfake. It can add your vo…

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