Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 24, 2026
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Episodes Episode #2513 Segments
MainContent Media & Fake News

Back to episode — Episode 2513 CWSA 06/22/24

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ight or wrong. It's a coin flip, 50/50. So if it's 50/50 and one of the members is making money from the belief that you can be cured of this condition, and it's a, what kind of studies are the gold-plated ones? You've heard this, right? There's a kind of science that's a gold standard and it's a randomized controlled trial. So the randomized is important so that you don't accidentally study the w…

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anged to talk to Michael Ian Black, who is an online presence in the political conversation. He has very Democrat-centric kind of views. And I caught his attention by posting that all the news is fake. And he questions how I know anything's true and why do I keep reposting the news if I think it's all fake. And those, I say, are good questions. And so rather than discuss what would be, oh by the way if you don't know him he's a well-known comedian, writer, actor kind of person. So I'll ask him how he wants to be introduced. But he's got a variety of skills. And rather than talk about what's true, which would immediately get us off the rails because we'll never agree what's true, I agreed and he agreed that what I talk about is how I can tell when the news isn't real. And I think that would be fascinating, like a great public conversation. Because we'll go through things like the Scott Alexander rule that if you see a story that, well you'll never see a story that says "dog bit man" because that's too boring for the news. But if you ever see a story that a man bit a dog, it probably didn't happen. That's the Scott Alexander rule because it's too fantastical. And fantastical stories almost are never true. And if you know the players, you also know if it's true. And if you know somebody's getting paid, you also know something. So those are just, that's just a sample. But there are probably, I don't know, 20 different

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things that I've taught you about how to spot fake news. And I thought it would be really useful to run over that list with him and just see if he kind of tracks with the tools, not necessarily the conclusions. Because I think that's where you find the common ground. Because I'm not going to tell him that everything the news on the right is true and the news on the left is wrong. Yeah, the Scott A…

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