Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 9, 2026
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MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2829 CWSA 05/04/25

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opinion about war. We should fight wars without killing any civilians. Who's with me? Anybody? Anybody want to sign on to my half opinion? Because in the real world, you don't get that option. So you just say, "Well, we should." And what about using trade as a weapon? Well, we should not. As soon as you see the word "should," there's some happening. So that's your persuasion lesson of the day. Alw…

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maybe it's not 90-10, but I'll bet it's not 100%. Do you think 100% of therapists are good enough to fix people's mental problems? Not 100%. And do you think it's 50%? Because 50% would be worth trying. I've got a feeling it's closer to 10% that can really make a difference. The rest just give the benefit of being a good listener, I suppose, which is valuable too. Just a guess.

So don't take any of that. This is not medical or therapy advice because I don't know enough about the field. I've never had any mental problems I've needed to get therapy for. Which I always think is weird. How many of you would say of yourselves that you've not really had any mental problems that required any help? How many of you would say that? Because I feel like I'm unusual. Like I don't have anxiety. I don't have depression. I don't have self-doubt. I don't have any of that. And I'm not sure why. I don't think I was born with better genes or anything like that. I have no idea why. I just don't have them. Yeah. So a number of you are in good shape too. Oh good.

According to the New York Post, there's a former State Department analyst who wrote checks to herself during her job for $650,000 over two years. Now the fun part of this is the trick she used for embezzling. So apparently she was using QuickBooks. So she had access to QuickBooks and then she would go in QuickBooks and I guess nobody was checking her work and she would write a check to herself and then print it. But here's what she cleverly did. Then she would go back into QuickBooks after she had printed the check and change the name that was in QuickBooks from her own name, which is what she had just printed out, to some name that sounded like a vendor. And she got away with that for two years and got $650,000 out of the government.

Now the question I ask you is, how much of that is happening? I go back to my observation that if you just drive around in a nice neighborhood,

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you can't really understand how so many people got so much money. Or back in the times when I would go on vacations to nice places and I would think to myself, you know, I'm the Dilbert guy. I got super lucky, made more money than most people. So I get to go to this resort, some five-star resort somewhere, but then it would be full. And I would think to myself, how could there be so many people wh…

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