Back to episode — Episode 578 Scott Adams - All the News, With Coffee
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res in your head? When he said engineers didn't you see an engineer? When he said startups didn't you see a little group of startups? When he said technology weren't you seeing something? This was visual. He's turning the concept into a visual and making you imagine it. "...people and goods flowing quickly and securely throughout the region as economics become more integrated and people become mo…
← Previous segment →rom other people who are experts after that and I would just summarize by saying that the question of whether thorium is better than ordinary plutonium for nuclear power is not a settled question. In other words there are experts who will tell you wow thorium looks like it has some advantages but when you dig down there are also advantages to plutonium. There might be more thorium available in the world but it's harder to get to or maybe the plutonium is harder to get but we have a bunch sitting around. So there are a lot of things that will change how you see this.
The bottom line is that there are people who think thorium is the answer. I think there are four startups or so working on it, maybe more. And there are people who think it isn't and they're all qualified. So there are a lot of qualified people who have a disagreement on that. That's all I'll say about that.
So one of the biggest news in the world, this seems to be only news to half of the world and not the other, is the social media platforms stuff and the Project Veritas undercover work. They've got a document that appears to say, so this is the latest. So Project Veritas has produced a document that allegedly shows a conversation within Google, YouTube were part I guess, in which they're discussing how to minimize the influence of people they call Nazis including Dave Rubin, Jewish, and then also they call Ben Shapiro a Nazi, Jewish, and Prager University. I don't know if he's Jewish too but once you start calling well-known Jews Nazis you've really gone over too far.
Now the document that was uncovered we don't know exactly the context because I'm gonna be the one who sort of makes you unhappy and saying that people are saying that Prager is Jewish too. So the fact that there are three people in Google or there are people in Google who saw three prominent Jewish conservatives consider them to be Nazis is I mean that says a lot about the world right? I mean what however you could get that viewpoint and in the facts and evidence is sort of astonishing.
But here's the thing. What we don't know from that document is what came of that conversation. If you have a big organization it is not unusual for there to be people disagreeing and that if you were to see all the disagreement before you saw the final decisions you would have a very different idea about the company. Let me say that again. I've worked for big companies. I've been in a lot of meetings. If you only saw the result of the meeting you'd say hey looks like pretty good people in that meeting they came up with decision. If you saw what happened in the meeting before the decision you would be horrified because any meeting has dumb people in it and dumb people are gonna say super dumb stuff. But you trust that the process, the meeting, the boss, the smarter people will prevail. And so the fact that there are dumb people saying insanely stupid and harmful things in the context of discussing what to do next doesn't necessarily tell you that the company did something wrong. It's a huge red flag.
And so you know I certainly agree with everybody who says my God my God my God the fact that they're even having this conversation and talking in that way assuming the document is true and in this world we can never assume anything but if it is true it would be very alarming. But we don't know if that one person's opinion was everybody's opinion and we don't know if it translated into any actual policies. But you sure got to worry about it.
And you may have also seen the I guess it was a whistleblower from Google who was talking about the internal conversations and James O'Keefe was interviewing him and if you saw it he was the voice of the whistleblower was digitally altered so it's brown the garbled voice and then you can see that the image was distorted. Let me say this. I have no reason to believe that that whistleblower is fake. No reason to believe that. But I want to say just because it needs to be said we no longer live in a world where seeing a disguised whistleblower on video should be considered credible. Sorry. You know I don't want to say that. I would love to say this is a real whistleblower. We know it's real. The things the whistleblower is saying you know are true. We just don't live in that world anymore. Now I'm not doubting it's true. I'm saying that if you saw that and you said oh it must be true because he's on video, he's on video, he's talking, you know this is a group they used, trusted before, it's probably true. It might be. I'm not saying it's not. I'm just saying that we no longer live in the world where looking at a video of a thing or listening to a person talk is quite as meaningful as it used to be.
Somebody says Trump just did a great tweet. So I'm gonna if it's so great that you mentioned it I'm gonna pause. I guess I'm gonna pause it. I'm gonna look at it. So give me one moment to look at the Trump tweet.
All right. Women's soccer. Women's soccer player, you know, just stated that she is quote not going to the effing White House if we win. Okay so first of all I love the fact that you put that in a tweet. Other than the NBA which now refuses to call owners owners please explain that. I just got back criminal justice reform passed, Black unemployment at the lowest of our country ever and the property index is also best number ever. Leagues and teams love coming to the White House. I'm a big fan of. Okay well I don't know that's just that's not that fun.
All right so here's what to make of all the Google stuff. It does look to me that Google has been having direct conversations about people like Dave Rubin, people like Crowder etc. And it does seem that there are people within the company whose intentions are to block them from being seen. So the fact that Google has employees who apparently have intentions of blocking some kind of voices that they consider over the line but you and I would consider like right down in the middle is enough to regulate. So I think the case for regulating the social media platforms is now made. Is there anybody who would disagree with that? Is there anybody out here who doesn't think the social media platforms have to be regulated now with what we know? Even if everything we've heard is not exactly the way it would have happened the uncertainty that injects into the system it really it's no longer a question anymore. Now we should be talking about how to do it.
Somebody says break up. I don't think so. I don't think breaking them up is the answer. I mean I'm open to that conversation but my first blush is no don't break them up.
All right I have a friend who has the worst case of TDS that I know in person. And here's the amazing thing. My friend emailed me this yesterday. He said have I seen this latest accuser against President Trump? Have I seen the things she's saying? And now surely I must stop saying good things about President Trump he argued because now this latest accusation from the Elle writer is so credible he said and so on point that clearly I must know that it's true.
And I read that email and I thought what universe are you living in where that looked totally credibl
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e to you? And so I said have you seen the Anderson Cooper interview? And he said that he had seen the Anderson Cooper interview which to me looked just as crazy but he hadn't yet seen the Anderson Cooper. So he watched it and then he emailed me back and said okay he did watch that and that was, I don't forget what word to use, but he did mention there was an unusual interview but he was still conv…
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