Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive July 10, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas
Episodes Episode #2442 Segments
MainContent Media & Fake News

Back to episode — Episode 2442 CWSA 04/12/24

Context —

or my members in the Locals group. So I do little micro lessons, two to four minutes, that gives you a life skill. So after two minutes you learn something you'll know how to do for the rest of your life. Now, if you do about 200 of them, which I have, over 200 micro lessons at scottadams.locals.com, you would know that willpower is literally imaginary. So they did a whole study on a thing that li…

← Previous segment →

more about how to make boring food taste good? That'll get you a lot.

So no, science should talk to the other parts of science which do know that willpower and free will don't exist. But they studied it. Do you know why they studied the thing that doesn't exist? Because they're experts. They're experts. Let's drink to the experts, shall we? To the experts. Love those experts.

Let's see if anything else in the news along those lines. All right, here's a recommendation that I don't know how much of this is real, but it feels real. I think I may have told you this before. You know Andrew Huberman. He talks about the importance of getting early morning sun, taking off your sunglasses and standing in the sun for five minutes in the morning. And that's if it's sunny. I guess you stand there longer if it's a cloudy day. And that's supposed to set your body rhythms for the rest of the day. Now, I'm not an expert, so I don't know if that's true or not.

But also there are claims from other people that you can, if you take off your shoes and go outside, you can do grounding where it resets your electrical forces or something. I don't know if that's real. I have no idea. And then there's also the Huberman breathing technique where you do the two long inhales through your nose and then one exhale, and you only have to do it three or four times, and that resets some of your bodily nervous system or something.

So what I discovered, or it's sort of obvious actually, is that you can do all three at the same time. Do any of them have any real scientific backing? I don't know, because science is not something that I would trust. Do you know why I don't trust and don't know if grounding, getting sun, or the breathing technique work? Because it comes from experts. Anybody who trusts the experts in 2024 is just guessing.

But I'll tell you what I did do. Since I could do all three of these at the same time, I mean, what are you going to do when you're standing there in the sun? So I take off my shoes outdoors, stand in the sun, do a few Huberman breaths, and I've done all three things now. So there's a, you know, I've got three shots that at least one of those things makes a difference in the real world. I don't know. So here's my experience. Oh my God, do I feel good when I do it immediately. It's the damnedest thing. I just walk outside, take off my shoes, do that breathing in the sun, and I feel extraordinary. And it does in fact feel as though it kicks your day off to a good day. Can I prove it? Nope. Do I believe it's true because the experts told me? Nope. I just know it's three things that can't hurt me. They can't hurt me, right? So I do them, and then it makes me feel happy.

What if it's not really working but it makes me think it's working? That's called working. You get that, right? Since I'm trying to, I'm resetting my mental state as much as anything else. If I walk away thinking it worked, it worked. I don't need to hook any electrodes to my body. If I think I'm happy, good enough.

All right, so that's worth trying. Have you ever had this experience that if you try to explain the real world to people, you know, the Mike Benz version, you can't do it without sounding crazy? And it's in this category of things which can't be communicated. It's one of my favorite mental things to think about. I just love thinking about things which are true and can be put into words but still can't be communicated.

Let me give you an example. The little boy who cried wolf, right? He pretended he saw a wolf until finally when he saw a real wolf, he tried to tell people in clear language that was true. There's a wolf. But he couldn't communicate it because he created a situation where they were just sort of deaf to his statements about wolves.

Now, the Mike Benz, let's say I like to use him as just a simple way to describe the larger blob of the government working with NGOs and the Atlantic Council and how Soros is connected as their banker, and it might involve all these other international things and how they affected the platforms and the news. And it's so complicated that as soon as you start explaining it to a normie, you know, somebody who's had no exposure to this idea whatsoever and they think they're living in a democracy or some kind of republic, which I don't think we have for decades, you can't explain it.

And I'm only bringing it up because it's fascinating how you can hide stuff. One of the ways you can hide stuff is right in front of people. You just have to make it complicated. That's it. Yeah. As long as something's complicated, you can hide anything. Do you know what's complicated? Climate change. It's complicated. You know what's complicated? Elections. I'm not in the concept level, but when you get down to who's doing what and how many moving parts, it's kind of complicated. So everywhere that there's something that's complicated, it's probably really bad because that's where you hide all the bad stuff, is in the complications. Yeah, manufactured consent. Yeah, that's part of it anyway.

I finally figured out what it is that makes MSNBC look different from CNN. CNN looks like people who are sometimes knowing they're lying and sometimes don't know they're lying. You know, they might actually believe their own news. But here's what they don't look like. They don't always look crazy. That's my take. When I watch CNN, nobody has crazy eyes. You know, I keep calling out people who have obvious mental illness problems. You can see it in their eyes. When I look at Jake Tapper, do I say to myself that guy's crazy? No, no, he's completely sane. When I look at Wolf Blitzer, totally sane. Totally sane.

When you look at Rachel Maddow, does she look sane to you? I mean, really. When you look at Lawrence O'Donnell, does he look sane? I mean, really, does he? Now, let me give you a contrast just so I'm not making fun of all of their hosts. When I look at Ari Melber, does he look insane? No, not even a little bit. He could leave MSNBC and work on CNN tomorrow because he looks like the CNN people. They might be misled about something. They might be wrong. But they don't look crazy. They look like people doing their job as they see it.

Now, here's what really sets me over the top and makes MSNBC a comedy for me. CNN is fascinating, and I recommend you watch it just to find out what they're telling their people, just to be well informed about what people you don't agree with necessarily are saying. But when I watch MSNBC, I'm actually watching it for the jokes, meaning that I find it hilarious. And I finally figured out what it was that makes it s

Context —

o funny. It's the smugness. The smugness. If somebody's just mentally ill, it's just disturbing. If somebody is perfectly sane and smug, sometimes they're just popular. I would say Hannity is kind of smug, wouldn't you? Sean Hannity. He seems a little smug. Maybe you'd say he's just confident, but a little smug. But he doesn't come off as comedy because he looks like he's doing his job. And you kn…

Next segment → →