Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas
Episodes Episode #3021 Segments
NewsReaction Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 3021 CWSA 11/17/25

Context —

you've never had a better time. But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny shiny human brains, all you need for that is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tankard, a chalice, a stein, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the d…

← Previous segment →

alled the simultaneous sip. And here it is now. The sip arrives.

Well, I saw that Elon Musk had noted that his competitor Waymo, the self-driving car taxi company, has expanded to the entire Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area. That's where I live. So now I could take a Waymo way more than I could before. Yep. Way more than I could.

And I was wondering how big a deal it is to be the first self-driving car company in an area. Don't you think that if you loaded one app and it worked out, let's say you put the Waymo app on your phone and then you called the Waymo and it showed up and you were happy with the experience, would you even do another one? Or would you say, "I'm a Waymo person now. It does everything I need to do"? I think going first is going to be a really big deal. So Elon better get some local firsts.

Although if you were going to try two things, you'd try Waymo and then you would definitely try Tesla. So if you're going to try two things, the second one, if not the first one, would definitely be Tesla.

Elon says that AI has run out of human knowledge to train on. So now the knowledge it trains on is knowledge it makes up. How in the world does that work? It just makes up knowledge and then it trains itself on the stuff it made up. Does that sound like it would work? Does your common sense tell you that AI could get smarter by simply hallucinating what's true and then acting like it just got trained on something that was true? How does that work? I don't know. I'm a little bit suspicious that that's a real thing.

But I like the idea that AI has already run out of human knowledge to train on. All of human knowledge has now been basically used. Nothing left. So that's how smart the AI is.

So there was this guy Yann LeCun who is the head AI guy at Meta. He's reportedly leaving Meta. I think I told you this before, but I didn't give you the reason, which I just found out today. The reason he's leaving Meta, the top AI guy, is that he doesn't think the large language models are a path to human-level AI. He calls it a dead end.

So one of the guys who arguably would be the top AI guys in the country is in complete agreement with the cartoonist who has spent really no time in AI, and we have exactly the same prediction. Hey, this doesn't look like it could go very far. It looks like you've already reached your limit of what you can do. Well, LeCun and I, we agree it's already reached its limit.

All right. What else is happening?

Yeah. The one thing that never gets less funny is when a Democrat says something and then there's a compilation clip that shows that the Democrat was lying or said the opposite thing. Well, we got another one. So Gavin Newsom is complaining on video. He goes, "Not one person ever in my office has ever used the word Latinx." How long did it take someone to make a compilation clip of all the times that Gavin Newsom, not just people in his office, but how many times did Gavin Newsom use the word Latinx on video in public? There's a few times. Yeah. Not only did people in his office use it, he used it. And he's acting like, "Oh, no, no, no. I never would have used that. And people in my office? Are you kidding me? Why would we ever use that?" Oh, good compilation clip.

And as somebody asked, I saw this in a post asked by One Bad Dude: Do you think that Gavin knew he was lying? Because sometimes it's ambiguous, isn't it? Maybe he knew he was lying. He just figured nobody would check. Or did he not remember that he used it? Or did he use it for a week and got over it and doesn't remember he used it for a week? I don't know. Probably just forgot. It's my best guess.

Anyway, Trump wants to, not that it's going to happen, but he expressed a desire that the FCC would cancel the licenses of ABC and NBC for being fake news and deep state propaganda for the Democratic Party. So he accused them, ABC and NBC. Yeah, deep state propaganda. So are you happy with that? Are you okay if the president of the United States tries to take down ABC and NBC as in they won't even be networks anymore?

Well, I don't think it's going to happen. So probably looks again like one of these really just a threat so that they'll say less bad things about him in the future. I think he has a totally legitimate case. I believe that what Trump is complaining about is real. It's fake news. And I think he has every right to complain about it. Also has every right to try to put them out of business because they're trying to put him out of business. So it's not an ideal situation that two of our main news sources are so undependable that the president wants them banned. That's pretty bad. But he's not wrong. They do seem to be legitimately and really fake news.

All right. We of course have to talk about the Epstein files. The story that never ends. It never ends. Can I wake up one morning and not have a news story about the Epstein files that are not really news stories?

All right. What's the latest news story that's not a news story? So Trump is still calling the Epstein files a hoax, a Democrat hoax. And now what's new is he's called on House Republicans to vote to release the Epstein files. So he's completely reversed from don't release them to release them.

Now what do you think happened when he reversed from don't release them to release them? Because when he said don't release them, his critics said, "Oh, there must be some bad stuff in there for Trump because that's why you don't want them released." But now that he says do release them, what do his own people say? Well, everybody basically says, "Oh, he must have..." I think it was Bill Kristol. So Bill Kristol is suggesting that the only reason that Trump would say release them is he's already scrubbed out all the bad stuff that would pertain to him. You think that's true? We'll never know.

And then let's see what else. We have nothing to hide, Trump says. Well, we'll find out. And he says, "I don't care. They can have whatever they are legally entitled to. I don't care," he says in all caps. But he doesn't want some of these big names on the Democrat side looked into: Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers. He mentions them again.

And then there's the other possibility that there was never any risk to Trump. There was nothing in there, but there was some risk to somebody important that he wanted to protect. You know, maybe a head of state, maybe somebody in our intelligence group said, "Oh, you don't want to throw that country under the bus, so just pretend there's nothing in there." Yeah.

Meanwhile, remember I told you about a year ago I sold my Nvidia stock because I didn't believe it could go up forever. Well, SoftBank sold their Nvidia stock and Peter Thiel sold his and some investor named Stanley Druckenmiller sold all his. So there are a number of people who are looking to sell all their Nvidia. They think it's had its run. There's no way to know. And do not take any financial advice from me because I'm not good on financial advice. I can tell you what I did, but I can't tell you it's a good idea unless it's just straight diversification, which in this case I was. In my case, I wasn't diversified enough. So I got rid of my Nvidia stock and just diversified. So that part's not really an investment. It's just sort of a normal thing people do.

All right. Thomas Massie believes that some high-profile government official, but we don't know if it's our government, is linked to the Epstein crimes and that that's the most likely reason that they haven't been released. And it could be that Trump is just really, really tired of protecting whoever it is. And he just decided, you know what? You're on your own. You're totally killing me politically. I can't protect you anymore. You're on your own. You think that's going to happen?

So yeah, Massie points out that Republicans have been saying it's a hoax and Massie says he expects a deluge of House Republicans will vote to compel the release of it. Do you think if you had to bet now that presumably all the obstacles have been removed, would you bet that the Republicans would vote to release it? Because whatever was the situation, you know, there were important people being protected or some national secret or whatever, that probably didn't change. Meaning that in all likelihood the Republicans will have a new reason not to release it. What do you think? You want to take a bet?

So my bet is that there will just be a new reason, maybe one we haven't heard, maybe a recycled one for why Republicans don't want to release it. But it will release Trump from that danger because he'll say, "I'm in favor of releasing it. Why don't you guys release it? What's wrong with you guys? I say release it. Why don't you want to? What have you done?"

So I think that's where it's headed. It's headed where nobody can prove anything, but at least if you're Trump, at least you can be the one who said full disclosure because that doesn't look nearly as bad as wanting to keep it a secret, right? No matter what the reason is, if you're protecting another country or state secret, it doesn't matter what the reason is. It's a bad look. And now Trump has the option, if he wants to turn that bad look into a good look by just saying, "Hey everybody, release those files." I sure would if I were you.

All right. Scott Jennings is trying to explain what happened between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump. As you know, they're not getting along right now. Trump wants to primary her and he's promoting somebody else for her job. And it's kind of interesting to watch, but the most interesting thing is that Marjorie Taylor Greene has kind of taken some kind of a change in life and change in approach.

And so when Dana Bash on CNN was criticizing her, she's talking about attacks on people. So Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn't like the attacks that Trump is doing to her and Dana Bash quite reasonably said we have seen these kinds of attacks or criticism from the president at other people. It's not new. And with respect I haven't heard you speak out about it until it was directed at you. That's a pretty good biting criticism, right? Hey, Marjorie Taylor Greene, why are you only concerned about Trump's narrative when it's about you?

And what did Marjorie Taylor Greene say? "Dana, I think that's a fair criticism." What? I think that's a fair criticism of her. Now, you don't hear that much, do you? That would surprise me. She says, "I'm sorry for taking part in toxic politics." She just totally owned it. It's very bad for the country. It's been something I thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated. What do you think of that?

You know, MTG, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is one of the most famously pugilistic fighting kind of a politician. So you just sort of automatically expect her to fight against whatever pushback she's getting. But here she not only didn't fight, she said, "Dana, I think that's a fair criticism." I almost fell off my chair because I thought it was a fair criticism too. But to hear somebody say something that's true in public, it felt kind of brave just to say something that's just true.

All right, betting against the Epstein file. You can make money probably. So we'll see what happens there. But I guess Marjorie Taylor Greene is now being contacted by private security firms. People are warning her that she's not safe. I guess they want to get a contract to protect her. And I don't know, she might not be safe. If there are enough people who think that she's stopping Trump's progress, that's not a safe place to be because there are crazy people in this world and some of them are Trump supporters. So I would worry about her safety. And she said in her post, "As a woman, I take threats from men seriously." Okay. I'm not sure you had to go full gender on that, but we get what you're saying.

Now, I've said before that I like MTG, so I certainly don't want her to be hurt or lose her job over any of this, right? But on the other hand, you can certainly see why Trump would want the most loyal, obedient people in office so he can get done what he needs to get done. So you can see both sides.

And Trump said, "I don't think your life is in danger." Somebody asked him about it because frankly I don't think anyone cares about her. I don't think anyone cares about her. That's such a Trump thing to say. No, people do care about her. I care about her. Don't you? Is there anybody here who cares about her? I care about her because she's pro-America, which means she cares about me, right? If she cares about me because I'm an American, I can care back. That's fair. So yeah, I care.

But apparently she's now getting the pizza doxing where people will send pizzas to your house just to scare you that they know your address. I guess that's happening. Bomb threats. Man, it is tough to be a politician. I'll tell you, it's so sad that you have to risk your life just to be a politician and have an opinion. Oh well, going to risk my life today just to have an opinion.

All right. Apparently Jen Psaki who's talking about an article in ProPublica. So they think they've got a scoop about Trump's Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is apparently spending, they say, a whole bunch of money, $200 million of taxpayer dollars into TV ads to promote her work at DHS. Does that sound real? Do you believe ProPublica that Kristi Noem is going to spend $200 million to promote her work at DHS?

What is slightly more likely if you look at that story and you didn't know anything about it, what is more likely than the way they've presented it? Well, what's more likely is it's the commercials every one of us has seen where Kristi says some version of if you don't take this airplane home, you're going to be on the airplane home anyway because we're going to send you home and you might as well do it the right way. You might be able to come back. Now, would that be an example of promoting her work at DHS? Yeah, it would be. That would be an example of promoting her work. But it also is in our benefit because she's promoting that all these people can get a ride home and then it's cheaper for us, it's cheaper for them. You know, we're deporting peacefully.

So do you think the ProPublica story is legit or they're really just telling you what you already knew, which is she does commercials showing that the border is closed and she's doing a good job? I don't have any problem in that particular job. If it were a different job, I wouldn't want her to spend money saying she's doing a good job. But when she says she's doing a good job, it's telling all the people who might want to sneak into the country, it's not going to work. Don't you want that? Don't you want the potential illegal immigrants who are thinking about coming to look at her commercials and say, "Oh, looks like she does a really good job of keeping people out. Maybe I won't go." Any story sounds like BS to me.

But this is funny. According to Headline USA, they are writing that I guess Comey and maybe some others back in Comey's day in government, they were allegedly misspelling the names of people in their files so that when you did a search, you couldn't find them because they thought they were up to no good. So they spelled Clinton C-L-I-N-I-N, Clinton. And I guess some of the other names were also humorously misspelled. And Comey himself used the alias Reinhold Niebuhr. Is that a German name?

All right. Pain chip eaters. All right. I see you there.

All right. So apparently the whole Comey situation is still bubbling around and I think Kash Patel is saying, "Oh, we're definitely going to get some people on this." I don't know how long we have to wait before they get some people.

And then Weiner's name was spelled "Wiser" and Huma Abedin was spelled "Abadin" with two D's instead of one. And there were no other misspellings in the email. So the only misspellings were the people they were trying to hide and there it was their last names.

Dr. Oz, CMS administrator, tells us that Trump is considering, doesn't mean he's going to do it, but he is considering extending the Obamacare subsidies at least until figuring out something better to do. That makes sense. He should at least consider it. Doesn't mean he's going to do it.

Fareed Zakaria of CNN shocked the world today by going hard at Democrats. He's been hinting at it before, but boy did he go hard at Democrats today. And he said that if Democrats want to rebuild faith in their electorate, they must rediscover the lost art of competence. Competence. That's the bar they have to cross. Competence. That's not a very high bar, is it?

But he says when government seems incapable of building housing, schools, or balancing budgets, even sympathetic voters lose faith. Well, he's right. You are right, Fareed. You're going to have to do something right or it's going to be hard to get elected. Just do something right. Anything.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos is taking over another CEO job. It'll be at a new AI startup called Project Prometheus and they would use AI for engineering and manufacturing and computers and spacecraft. It's got about $6 billion in it. 100 hires. Now why would Jeff Bezos of all people want a regular job again? Oh yeah, I think I'll go to work and get a paycheck, have a regular job. Now, obviously as CEO it's not a regular job, but why would he even want to do this?

Well, here's something I know that maybe you don't know. If AI does what it's supposed to do, and some people think it won't, but if it does, imagine the impact it would have on engineering and manufacturing and the big stuff like autos and computers and spacecraft. It would be the biggest thing. So you think that Amazon is big because it sells things to basically everyone. Do you know how big it would be if there were an Amazon for learning how to build stuff? So suppose that Amazon was the thing that sold things, but Jeff Bezos builds this other company that can manufacture anything. And then he's got another company that can sell anything. He would kind of own everything, wouldn't he? If they can build anything and then they can sell anything. He's got it done. That's all he needs to do. So that'd be cool.

Well, allegedly Trump is thinking about focusing on affordability for 2026 and beyond. Affordability. Do you believe that? Do you think Trump would just borrow the Democrat rallying cry, the one that Mami, the communist, as he would say, is pushing, affordability? Do you think he'd just steal it and say, "Oh, that's pretty good. I'll just take that." Affordability. Well, it wouldn't be a bad play to just adopt it because it works. There's nothing wrong with adopting the part that the other person does that works. Just don't adopt the parts that don't work. So affordability, yes.

The trouble is I don't think there's anything that the Republicans do on affordability. They don't really have any secret sauce for that, do they? They can use the words and they can say things like, "We're going to fight. We're going to fight for you, affordability." What does that mean? Well, we're going to fight. We got really fight. Okay, but what are you actually going to do? Fighting. We're going to fight. Okay, but how's that make anything more affordable? Scott, if you don't fight, you're not going to get anything. I know, but I'm still not connecting all the dots. What's all the fighting got to do with me lowering my expenses? How does that work? I don't know. I guess he'll tell us someday.

Like I said before, Kash Patel says there's a 100% chance you're going to see people accountable for the grand conspiracy of Russia and also J6. Can't wait for that.

Did you know that LA, which is always at least a little bit interested in affordable housing, they're going to go big on affordable housing now, probably because of the fire. They got more land that's sitting there not being used. They'd like to use it. But apparently building affordable housing is now the hottest thing.

Now, when I say affordable housing, what do the NPCs say? NPCs, do your thing. Say the thing that you always say whenever I mention affordable housing. Go. I know what you're going to say. You're going to say, "I'm not going to live in any tiny house." Who mentioned a tiny house? No one. No. Tiny house was never a part of the conversation. So get out of here with your tiny house talk. Affordable is different than tiny, although sometimes they can be the same. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what they'll be. But it's hard to get approval for anything, but it'll probably be easier to get approval for low-cost stuff.

Toyota is going to build a battery factory in the US. Another one. I guess we've got some already. And a $10 billion investment. Wow. Create up to 5,100 new American jobs. We'll take it.

And meanwhile, over in Ukraine and Russia, New York Post is reporting that Ukraine attacked a major Russian oil refinery and also the site of elite drone units. So there are about 10 of them, the Russian oil refineries. So I think at the current rate that Ukraine is destroying them, they're probably rebuilding at about the same rate. So I'm not really feeling like there's any progress. All right. So they're just a little robot war going after each other.

Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, Hamas is more popular than ever among the Palestinians. Wait, what? Hamas is more popular than ever among the Palestinians. Do you think we did something wrong there? Did somebody do something wrong? Because it wasn't really looking for Hamas to get more popular. That's a scary situation, but apparently that's happened.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Trump said he would talk to Maduro, head of Venezuela. But I like that Trump in general is willing to talk to whoever he needs to talk to. I always thought it was the dumbest thing that our leaders would say, "Oh, we cannot talk to you until you make these concessions." How about you just talk to us? How about everybody talks to everybody? Yeah, how about that?

So anyway, Trump says he'll talk to Maduro if it comes to that, which is the right answer. But I think that Trump wants to wait for those talks until he's frightened Venezuela with his military buildup. So once you have the entire military surrounding Venezuela, then you say stuff like, you know, this would be a good time to talk. Anybody want to talk? Talking would be fun.

All right, that's all I got for you today. It's gonna be a short show because Monday is boring. Yeah, Monday is boring.

Did I read you a reframe yet or was that upcoming? I can't remember if I read it. Did I or was I planning to read it? All right. Did I already read you... No.

All right. Here's one. This might be on top of or maybe not. So the usual frame is that some people have willpower and some people do not. And if you do not have willpower, you would be called weak. And if you do have willpower, somebody would say, "Hey, you got some willpower there." But here's a reframe from not thinking you have enough willpower and that people who also don't seem to have willpower are weak.

The reframe is that some people get more pleasure from certain vices than you do, and that's it. So let me put it this way. I'm not somebody who loves eating, although sometimes I do, but it's not like my passion or anything. But have you seen people whose passion is eating or their passion is wine or their passion is something that's not good for them? Yeah.

So let me open that up again. The refram

Context —

e is that sometimes you just like things more than other people. If you said to me, "Scott, you can never ride a motorcycle again," I would say, oh, I kind of liked riding motorcycles, but it wouldn't be the biggest problem in the world. But what if you loved motorcycles like you love them beyond what anybody could even understand? It just set you on fire, your brain. It made you happy. It changed…

Next segment → →