Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 24, 2026
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Back to episode — Episode 2681 CWSA 12/06/24

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brand of beer they'd transfer some of that good feeling into the beer. So I feel like the reason that the people smelling coffee performed better is because it triggered their past memory, not because it influenced their expectations of what would work. That's what I think anyway. Here's some backward science. According to University College London, adults who frequently post on social media are…

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itting there's some kind of other kind of life force here. Maybe.

Well according to The Independent there's this new scientific breakthrough in China where they made camouflage material that will instantly change color to match your background, sort of like animals do, chameleons. So if you wear these clothes you will just sort of disappear into the background. Now since you don't wear clothes on your face I'm kind of looking forward to this because wouldn't you love being like a floating head? Wouldn't you love to walk into a room and people go, ah, oh damn it, are you wearing those camouflage clothes again? And I would say yes, I'm obfuscating what I am. No I wouldn't say that because I don't say obfuscating. But I feel like the opportunity to look like a floating head is irresistible. So I see big potential for this technology. Floating head also good for the office if your boss is coming by. If you just sort of tuck into a ball, like if you have a hat or face mask, just cover up.

Meanwhile here's a story that is so good that I can't believe it's true. According to EV Central, Mercedes-Benz has developed a paint for the car that would be enough to charge your car for almost all normal business. In other words Mercedes-Benz allegedly has developed a paint that would be as robust as the paint on your car is now so it wouldn't be a bad kind of paint either, but that it can actually create enough electricity. The paint itself is designed to be like a solar panel but just paint. And it's so efficient that you could drive like 50 miles a day or something, basically your commute, without ever buying fuel.

Now do you believe that? Doesn't that sound a little bit too good that your cars would basically never need fuel, all you have to do is paint it with this kind of paint? I don't know. It's not going to happen right away. They're saying five to ten years. But I'm going to say probably not. If I had to place a bet I would place a bet that you will not be able to completely power your car for normal business because of the paint. It sounds good but I don't know. That's the sort of thing that never really happens.

In other news the University of Canterbury said they fed kids these little micronutrients and it reduced their irritability, anger and aggression and supposedly had a big difference in improving their emotional and regulatory systems.

Do you know how they could have saved a little bit of money on that? Yeah they could have just asked me. I've told this story before but it's one of my favorites of understanding human behavior. When I was in my first marriage and there were two stepkids and they were young, very young, and they would often get in arguments with each other because they were close in age and they'd be fighting it out, verbally fighting it out. And I would say we're going to have to do something. You know what are we going to do? And my ex-wife would say oh they're just hungry. And I would think what do you mean they're just hungry? Their behavior is aggressive and they're yelling at each other. That's not hunger. There's something else going on. It can't be just hunger.

And then she would put down a plate of food like lunch or whatever the meal was and their moods would completely change. They would sit down and take two bites and they'd be in a good mood. And I'd be like is this really happening? Did you just cure somebody's entire mental situation with a hot dog? Yes. Yes. All they had to do was eat and they were fine. And I watched that experiment repeated a number of times. Yeah food, it makes people relaxed. But it's more to my point that your body is your brain. So if you don't take care of your body you are not taking care of your mental health. Got to take care of your body first.

All right somebody says I post a lot. You know I do this for a living right? It's different. It's different if you're doing it every day anyway.

The House Intel panel according to the New York Post is thinking that it's increasingly likely that the mysterious Havana syndrome actually comes from some foreign actor. In other words the stories of the mostly embassy people, American embassy people, having some kind of brain disruption that they thought was maybe some kind of secret sonic Russian weapon and then people looked into it and they couldn't find any evidence there was a weapon. But now there is further investigation and according to subcommittee chairman Rick Crawford of Arkansas, quote, "I have discovered that there is reliable evidence to suggest that some anomalous health incidents, the AHIs, are the work of foreign adversaries."

Now I like Representative Rick Crawford. He's one of the good guys. But I don't think I quite believe that there's evidence of adversaries. I think the only thing there is is evidence that people have complained, they have certain kind of jobs, and that when investigated they have real damage. But the symptoms are all over the place and when I see too many symptoms I immediately think it's not a weapon, it's some psychological effect. Now the damage could be real but the psychology might be what's causing people to go have it looked at. And I suspect that this is a perceptual situation but I could be wrong.

So if I'm wrong on this one, if somebody someday, you know a whistleblower says yeah here's the weapon, I did it myself, watch I'll do it on this animal, we'll test it, you know I could imagine someday I could be convinced this was real. But I would place a really large bet that it isn't at this point. I will say that if you attended a subcommittee in which people gave you lots of evidence which is like oh this person had this problem and doctors say this problem, it's the documentary effect. So if you have a bunch of people coming in saying it sure looks like a weapon to me and nobody comes in to say here's the evidence that it's not a weapon, it's going to fee

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l like you really had a lot of evidence that an adversary did it. So I would say beware of the documentary effect if you have a subcommittee that's taking testimony that all kind of leads in one direction. All right. Meta according to Breitbart News, Meta is going big on nuclear energy to fuel their AI. So what's he going to do? So I guess all the big companies figure they've got to have some kin…

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