Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas
Episodes Episode #2996 Segments
NewsReaction Media & Fake News

Back to episode — Episode 2996 CWSA 10/22/25

Context —

is is it possible that COVID can make you smarter and make you evolve to a smarter thing. So here's the thinking. If you were exercising a regular muscle, the way you would do it would be to break the muscle and then when it recovered, it would recover as a stronger muscle, right? So for muscles, breaking them down is what makes them stronger. But what about your brain? Same thing. If you stress y…

← Previous segment →

s. I guess the American beef is way overpriced at the moment for a variety of reasons, supply and demand mostly, but I guess Argentina has some beef that we could get for cheaper. And Trump has said maybe yes, maybe that is a way. So I like the fact that he's open to it and it would be good for our ally and it might be good for us in the short run.

I have a confession after about 30 years of being a vegetarian and then a pescatarian. I was sitting around yesterday and I said to myself, you know what? I think I'm gonna try to eat a steak after 30 years of not having any kind of mammal in my mouth. Well, shut up. So I door-dashed a ribeye steak and now keep in mind 30 years of not having any kind of steak. I haven't had a hamburger or anything in my mouth in I think 30 years. I haven't done the math, but I think it's like 30 years. And you're wondering how it went. It was pretty good. It was a pain in the ass to cut it because I don't like to work that hard for my food, but delicious. Delicious. Might do it again. I'm in the nothing-to-lose category, so it's not like there's a downside.

According to Chemical and Engineering News, one in five chemists have deliberately put errors in their papers during peer review. Why would a chemist intentionally put an error in their scientific paper right when they're going to send it to peer review? Does anybody know why? Why would you do that? When I first read the title, I was like, what? Why would you intentionally put an error in the thing that you're going to send to somebody to look to see if there's an error and then it will be rejected and the whole point is to not be rejected. The answer is if the chemist knows that the person reviewing it had an error in their work, the only way they can match it is put the error in their own work. So if they know the peer reviewer is wrong about something, they'll put that same error in their paper so they'll be approved by the person who was also wrong about that thing. One in five chemists have done that at least once. So how's that settled science feeling now? All settled.

OpenAI is now previewing what they call agent mode. So I guess OpenAI can now take control of your cursor and your keyboard and it can complete some tasks. So it can book some tickets for you or do some research. How many of you would trust an AI to do tasks on your computer that involve your other applications? Because that always requires the AI to know your password, right, for the other application and that it would know also or the parent company presumably could find out exactly what you're doing and when and how. I don't think there's a single person who thinks that's a good idea. Not even one.

But I'm going to make a prediction. The way you overcome these sort of privacy and security risk problems if you have an application. Do you know you overcome all that resistance from the public? It's kind of easy. You just make it better than not using it. So if you're sitting in an office full of people who all say, "I'm never going to use this. Too dangerous." Well, then it's safe for you not to use it too. You'll just be one of those people in the office. But if your coworker is using this and doubling his productivity and getting a big bonus and you're not, you're going to be looking over at your coworker and saying, "Ah, I really don't want to use this agent mode, but I want a raise and I want to get my work done twice as fast and my coworker's doing all that." So I think people are going to cave. And keep in mind also that the AI will be your brainwasher from now on. So if the brainwasher, the AIs, tell you that this is safer than you

Context —

thought. At first you're going to say, "No, it's not. No, that's just your business model. That's not safe. You can't tell me it's safe." And then they'll say it again. So you hear it twice. Still won't convince you. How about a hundred times? How about if you hear a hundred times from a hundred different sources? Totally safe. Yeah, you can use agent mode. Everybody's doing it. All your relatives…

Next segment → →