Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
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Episodes Episode #2454 Segments
MainContent Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2454 CWSA 04/24/24

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ere that you know what the truth is and the other people got it wrong. How's that sit with you? Let's talk about evolutionary biology that science got right. Now if science got it right wouldn't that be really unique in science to be right? We know that 50% of the studies can't be reproduced. I'm pretty sure that climate change is completely BS if you look at the models. I'm pretty sure that the…

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ion was no longer believed by most scientists. Now of course the people who believe that they knew jumped all over me and said what are you talking about, natural selection is believed by almost all scientists. To which I said I probably should have said survival of the fittest because if you're not aware of this one of the most famous evolutionary biologists, Stephen Jay Gould, he was famous for having shown that survival of the fittest in its most narrow sense wasn't a good explanation of what was happening. In other words it wasn't just that you competed better so you survived but there were a whole bunch of things that could cause you to survive that were not directly related to how fit you were as a competitor. Sometimes it was just luck. Sometimes you just happened to be where there weren't any competitors so you weren't like especially fit to compete. You just didn't need to compete. Now other people say Scott Scott Scott you're using compete too narrowly. If there's a limit to resources you're at the very least competing for the limited resources and if the resources are not limited at the moment if your population keeps growing eventually you hit a limit and then you will be competing for resources. But there are these other elements like luck that could be part of it as well.

Now here's what I say and see if this blows your brain up. What does natural selection mean if it means all of those things that are part of the natural process? So what's it mean? It doesn't mean anything. So the mechanism to describe evolution is that hey it looks like things changed. These things are part of nature so it's natural selection. So nature selected what the outcome was. How could that not be the case? What would be the alternative to nature causing it to be the way it is? And to me that's such a broad explanation that it doesn't mean anything. All it is is an observation that here we are. Do you get that? Natural selection doesn't mean anything because it means everything. If it applies to everything in nature it had to happen just the way it did to get us to just where we are. It's not really talking about anything. And so here I note that the change was from you know this narrow definition of fitness to some wider definition of a number of variables involved. In my opinion that's a complete change in going from a specific mechanism to just saying I don't know, just look at nature.

Now I know what you're going to say, what the scientists will say. Scott Scott Scott I feel so bad for you when you talk about science because you don't know what's going on and you just don't understand all the sciencey things. But I do have a long track record of calling BS on fields in which I don't know anything about them and my track record is really good. Like really really good at calling BS. This to me looks kind of like BS. Now I'm not doubting that things change over time unless we're in a simulation but I do think that if you talk about people being dumb for evolution you kind of have to mention that the simulation is about a billion times more likely than evolution. And if the simulation is true then evolution is just another illusion within the simulation so it's not true. It's just an illusion and probably that the history gets created on demand as opposed to the other way around.

Anyway so Constantine, who's one of the more valuable I think public figures and thinkers, everybody has a blind spot and I think if you're not in an in-group you almost always have a blind spot for the nuance of the reasoning. So there I'm defending the sphere.

All right so the Gateway Pundit giving us more details on this Judge Cannon and the unredacted documents from Jack Smith in his investigation into the Mar-a-Lago boxes. So apparently according to the Gateway Pundit some of the things that were redacted but now we can see revealed that Biden's White House had direct ties to the Mar-a-Lago raid. The Biden regime was also directly tied to Jack Smith's investigation despite claims to the contrary from Merrick Garland. And the redactions also covered up that the National Archives had several conversations with the Biden White House. So the whole question was Trump keeps saying that the Biden administration is orchestrating all the lawfare and everybody oh no what are you talking about I've seen no evidence of that whatsoever. Yes you've seen no evidence of it because it was redacted and now we've seen it. Apparently there's lots of evidence that the Biden White House is directly connected to all these lawfare situations. So it's exactly what it looks like. It's lawfare. It's completely illegal, immoral, illegitimate and probably there's nothing will happen about it because the people in charge are the bad guys and if the bad guys are also the ones in charge nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to happen about that. Probably one of the biggest crimes of the century is the lawfare against Trump and the January 6 committee. Probably the biggest RICO conspiracy that I've ever seen will be — I don't think it'll be punished at all. Not at all.

All right here's a persuasion expert, Jonah Berger, and he was on some show recently teaching people this following persuasion trick. And he used the example of five-year-olds. You were trying to give five-year-olds to help clean up the house or clean up their space or something. And the technique using a Stanford University study — well this it was a Stanford University study about five-year-olds. If you say to them can you help clean you'll get a lower cooperation than if you word it this way. Instead of can you help clean you say can you be a helper and clean up. If you say can you be a helper you're giving somebody the option of accepting an identity. When people accept an identity then they act on the identity. It's automatic. If you ask them to do something they compare it to their identity and if it's not in their identity they don't do it. So this is a technique which I've also talked about but I call it the Jesus persuasion. Jesus persuasion is telling you that you could be a better person. So it's encouraging you to adopt an identity as a more moral and virtuous person than you were before you heard your lord talk to you. So it's very appealing to say to somebody hey how would you like to upgrade your identity from peasant who has nothing going for you to believer who has a higher moral standard and is going to heaven. And you think I wouldn't mind being one of those. And then once you become one all of the activities that go with it just come automatically.

All right now do you understand why I register as a different party from what I usually advocate? Does that make sense now? Do you understand why I'm not a joiner? I don't join groups because as soon as you join a group and identify in a real way — you know I register as a Democrat but I don't mean it so it's not my identity. So I try to avoid having an identity because the moment you have an identity it causes all actions to conform and that's what team play does. So if you say to somebody you're a Democrat they're going to start acting like one even if they were not inclined to before. Identity creates activity. So you've got to change somebody's identity if you want them to change their behavior. Almost nothing else works because people don't act aga

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inst their identity. Like if you think you're an honest person you don't rob a bank. It's pretty much a direct effect. If you think you're an academic you're probably more likely to go to school. Whatever you think you are you're likely to do that thing. So this is a really really good persuasion technique. Now let's apply it. Let's say you're a Republican and you want Republicans to vote. Do you…

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