Episode 1124 Scott Adams - Fake News, HOAXES, Science Denying, Magic Tricks, Things You Thought True

yes there we are again smoky california i hope uh many of you live in states where you can breathe the air and do all those things but i don't so it looks like it's going to be weeks of breathing whatever that is out there so i'm basically on house arrest i've got a little asthma issue so i can't go outside basically i'm just locked inside for weeks weeks and weeks but do i mind not what i have all of you here no no it's all good when you're here and i gotta tell you i i can't quite appreci um i don't think i could communicate how much i appreciate the time we spend together in the morning during this coronavirus situation and now the wildfires i gotta say it really helps it really helps to have this connection with all of you and speaking of connections wouldn't you like to enjoy the simultaneous sip all you need is a copper mugger glass a tanker chelsea stein a canteen jugger flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous step it happens now go shall we start with the good news everybody everybody wants some good news all right we'll start with that there's a report that the university of pittsburgh scientists have discovered a biomolecule biomolecule you know you should probably practice saying biomolecule before you say it out loud for the first time in your entire life i have never said the word biomolecule out loud until just this moment and well it wasn't it wasn't smooth but anyway this biomolecule may neutralize coronavirus so it's not a vaccine it would be some kind of biomolecule if it works apparently it works in animals which generally is not enough to get excited there are a lot of things work in animals that don't work in people but this particular biomolecule and come on you've probably just said biomolecule at home just to see if you could do it didn't you you did say it out loud biomolecule and apparently it's in the sort of general category of things that are generally safe so it seems to just rapidly just absolutely whack the coronavirus the end and uh looks promising so we might have something that's i don't know how long it would take to test this but seems promising my favorite story of the day is uh internet uh troll jacob wall faked an fbi and an fbi raid on some guy i think he works with jack burkman and so the washington post actually picked it up as a real story and i have to admit as fakes go this was really well done because the the videos and the pictures of what looked to be it really looked like an fba fbi raid somehow they got fbi jackets and they i think they hired actors or something and he puts on this whole fake fbi raid and the washington post reported it like it was real daily beast was on to him a little bit early so that's funny uh now i don't know why you know i i can't figure out the next part you know i understand the part about okay internet troll puts on a prank it's not his first rank and and it worked really well but was that the only point was he just trying to see if he could get the the news to report fake news i don't know i'm not sure what the point of that was um there will be some interesting news coming out of rasmussen a little later today i got a little heads up um i won't give you the details but let me just give you a little tease so rasmussen of course does polling and you're going to find out some details about this but it turns out and this might come as a surprise to you this might come as a big surprise so you know put your seatbelt on because you're never going to believe this it turns out that anybody who lived in a town that had protest slash riots not happy about it they're just not happy about it and will will it affect their votes well turns out yes yes so the people who live in places affected by the riots looting slash protesting not so much the peaceful protesting but everything that often comes with it those people are not happy not happy and here's the part you didn't know because it there are so many protests and they concentrated on the population centers if you said to yourself well if you added together the entire real estate that every protest was taken in the united states it would be like a pin brick on the big united states in terms of space that they occupied you know a few streets in each city you know 0.001 of the real estate was affected by these protests but it's not really about real estate is it it's about people if you happen to live near or within driving distance of where there was looting it changed your vote not every time but man people are pissed so where do you see the details in that but the biggest news is well let me put this in another context as impossible as this might seem by november we might be kind of over the coronavirus i don't mean over it medically i don't mean over it in terms of the economy being back to normal we won't be over it in terms of what it's doing to us but quoting my late mother who taught me one of the most valuable things you'll ever know about people and goes like this if you want to understand humans here's the thing we can get used to anything including hanging that was her little saying you can get used to anything so the problem with the coronavirus from the democrats point of view is that they have this complaint about the president not handling it the way they wish it would have been handled but it's really going to seem like old news by november even while we're still experiencing it because whatever happened in april it just feels like a hundred years ago already and we'll talk a little bit more about that but um don't discount the fact that you simply get used to the coronavirus you just get used to it and then whatever is happening at the moment artificially takes a bigger role because you were you know just got used to the other thing so if the protests are still happening and there's still new news about it and there's new video every day which seems to be the case people are going to vote on the protests way more than they're going to vote on coronavirus it'll have only to do with the fact that you just got used to one and you haven't yet got used to the other one all right let's see uh i want to give you a little context about what makes me look at the world a little differently than other people i get asked about this a lot people say to me scott scott what happened to you that makes you see the world differently and i've noticed that there are people who took what i would call my journey people who coincidentally were doing similar things and had similar experiences often think the same way i do and i thought it'd be useful to show you what that looks like here is my path to understanding reality when i was a little kid i loved optical illusions and i loved the fact that your brain had this this blind spot you could be looking at an illusion and even though you know it's really not that it looks like it and so i was always fascinated by how how easily the brain could be fooled by an optical illusion something you're looking right at then then i started noticing that people had different religions i was learning one religion but people had different ones and i and even at the young age of 11 i'd be saying to myself um okay there i don't know what's going on here because these religions are completely different so even if i imagine i got lucky and i got the right one so luckily i was born into the family that that had the right religion and all the other people were getting the wrong religion but or maybe everybody had the wrong religion so there were possibilities but the one thing i can say for sure is that everybody who had a different religion you could tell that we were not basing our decisions on religion on facts so much or at least not all of the world so we could see the people would believe just about anything didn't know who was right and who was wrong but it was pretty obvious that billions of humans who are otherwise normal can believe just about anything then i got interested in magic when i was a little chat a little kid doing magic tricks and you start learning that there are there are predictable let's say blocks in your brain there are predictable gaps and blind spots so you can craft a variety of different magic tricks that take advantage of weaknesses and perception now once you start doing enough magic tricks and you see you start seeing all the weaknesses and perception it changes how you see the world and you start saying well if you know if magic tricks can fool people so easily maybe i should look into this a little more i started looking into hypnosis and then persuasion and by the time i started analyzing fake news i gotta tell you it was easier it was easier to analyze fake news and let me give you an example of what learning magic tricks does if you can see this here's a penny all right it's just a penny you can see it there's nothing in this hand watch this i'm going to take this penny i'm just going to put my finger on it and i'm going to squeeze it until it becomes a quarter now sh you didn't hear that so learning how easily people could get fooled primed me for looking at the fake news there is a news or there's a little clip that went around twitter today that i recognized immediately as fake news and it was a clip of biden on the view from 2019 and the clip was it felt to me like it was obviously edited to take out all of his coherent statements and kind of string together a whole bunch of hesitant you know incoherent things now he is a little bit hesitant and incoherent but it was clearly edited to get rid of all the coherent parts now i point that out because it's the same trick done by the fine people hoax and what did people say when they saw the fine people oaks and i said hey that's a hoax they all said the same thing the ones who had been fooled by the hoax to a person they said scott it's not a hoax i watched it i saw it with my own eyes heard it with my own ears is real but then what about this biden video you watched it with your own eyes you heard it with your own ears but it's not real somebody helpfully showed the the full video so you can see that it was doctored it's just like the magic trick right you saw a penny in my hand so it was a penny had to be a penny you saw it saw it with your own eyes but it was just a magic trick once your brain is primed for looking for the magic trick you can see it a lot easier so um here's here's the correlation people who were interested in magic tricks when they were kids watch for this correlation they're less easily fooled by fake news because they're just primed for it all right uh the best freudian slip of the day was kamala harris referring to quote a harris administration and then she corrected it together with joe biden so here's what she'll do with a harris administration uh together with joe biden now what did i teach you before this happened all right if you've been watching my periscopes you know one of the things you learn in hypnosis class is that these are not accidents now the first i don't know a hundred times you see somebody misspeak you say to yourself okay that's like a funny coincidence because when they misspoke they said something that it felt like they were revealing some inner truth but you know it's just they just used the wrong word nope nope once you start paying attention you'll see it's not an accident now i'm not going to say it's never an accident my claim will be that in general it's actually meaningful not a hundred percent of the time but it is more meaningful than not do you think it's an accident that kamala harris referred to a harris administration you don't say that out loud unless you've been thinking it unless it's been part of a conversation so i think she has revealed that at the very least there's a conversation going about getting rid of biden or how long you last or something along those lines um there's a story which didn't get big news i don't know if the major news covered it but there is a research institute and a researcher who is making a claim that the coronavirus that came out of the allegedly came out of the wuhan lab had to be artificial that's pretty big news right there's a researcher who seems to know this field who has a claim that it could not have been a naturally occurring virus and that she can tell you exactly how they made it now that's a pretty big claim not only is she saying that it's man-made but she's claiming she could make it herself in other words she already knows the components if you take this you take this i think she said in six months you could make this thing is that true well i don't know if it's true but there's a claim today that the research institute had some connection with steve bannon now steve bannon has been hammering on china for the wuhan you know coronavirus so that's a little flag you have to ask yourself huh why is this not you know the headline news and the answer is uh i guess the news business has decided it's not entirely credible that doesn't mean it's false remember whenever i use the word credible that doesn't mean true or false it just means that the nature of it tells you to be cautious about believing it that's all so we'll keep an eye on that um so here's here's another magic trick and something that people study magic would see the antifa are using a magic trick now most of you know this which is and the magic trick is that they they name themselves auntie pha and then they say don't you get it we're anti-fascists so therefore if you're against us you must be a fascist now that's a magic trick to force you into thinking a certain way the real trick is that capitalism and fascism are the same thing that's the magic trick so instead of saying hey we're going to destroy all capitalism which you might say to yourself um that sounds pretty bad because i'm pretty sure if you destroy capitalism we all die or were conquered by china et cetera and but the anti-fog gets to say oh capitalism who said capitalism i said anti-fascist i didn't even mention capitalism what's what's capitalism got to do with it but here's here's how you know that's the magic trick have you ever seen the regular news interview somebody from antifa and ask him this question can you tell us is there such a thing as a capitalist system that you would not consider fascist there isn't bernie sanders vision of a socialist version of capitalism would still be fascist and this is the thing that the news if they did their job if if we had a real news business they would be calling anti-fall leaders or representatives just somebody who could you know i realize they don't have leaders in the traditional sense that they're they're public and identified they do have some kind of coordination but they don't seem to have anybody was the spokesperson but still you could find people who would be willing to talk about it so if we had a real news business they would call them on and they say trying to understand anti-fascist so i have one question could there ever be a capitalist system that is not fascist and the answer is not really now they might try to finesse it by saying sure sure you know if you did everything right but you really can't build that system because it would remove incentives human incentives so it would it would fall apart so the fact that this dog is not barking meaning that the news business is not giving you any any look not an approximate one not a not a glance not anything about what does that mean to be anti-fascist nothing it's just not a topic that tells you that the magic trick is working because as soon as they focused on it it would fall apart uh all right um do you remember some of the things that i said in the beginning of the coronavirus i told you i thought vitamin d would be important and now studies seem to be validating the vitamin d might be not just important but like really really important it's unconfirmed but it's looking that way and now there's a forthcoming study from 23andme showing that your genetic code could affect how how much the coronavirus affects you so remember i told you early on you know i've got a feeling there's a genetic correlation here and that if we knew what that genetic correlation was we could do way better in protecting ourselves because we'd know who needs to be protected and now sure enough so i say this because i always tell you that you should watch who is predicting well so on day one practically i was saying look at genetics look at vitamin d and correct correct so so you have to give me you give me those check marks that doesn't mean i'm right on everything and when i'm wrong you should point it out and yeah obesity and being african-american and you know a whole bunch of things that increase your risk all right trump talked to was in california yesterday talking to gavin newsom and people about the forest fires etc now here's a little fact that you may not have processed when you're watching that it's kind of interesting that trump and gavin newsom treat each other with an unusual amount of respect wouldn't you say you know they they differ no doubt about that but there is there's a level of respect there that you don't really it fools you a little bit because he doesn't seem to be as nice to every other governor but he's really nice to gavin newsom and vice versa but you might not know that gavin newsom's ex-wife kimberly guilfoyle is has of course been with don jr in a relationship for some time now and i'm pretty sure fact check me on this i think that gavin newsom and kimberly guilfoyle have children right or one child i don't know what the situation is but at least one which would mean that president trump basically has a um in effect you know that who knows what the relationship will will be in the future but in effect it's like he has a grandchild in law what would you call it you know a virtual grandchild his stepson a great a step grandchildren or something so gavin newsom and president trump share family they actually share family and i think that you have to really have that filter on when you see how they interact with each other i'm getting confirmation that they they have a son and you can't you can't discount how important that is the the personal relationship and the president has been always good with the personal relationships anyway what's interesting here is that uh gavin newsom was very diplomatic by saying yes forest management is a thing that needs to be done better i think we'd all agree but he asked the president to be open-minded to the difference of opinion about the importance of climate change and he the way he worded it was just really good i have to admit really good in the sense that he needed to be super diplomatic but still get his point across i think he did i'd say that communication wise he did a good job and then the president because he can't go five minutes without controversy i you know i listened to this and i was thinking to myself don't say it don't say it you know don't talk about trump i'm waiting for him to respond about the climate change stuff and the whole time i'm just no don't do it don't do it and then the president smiles and he goes he goes uh it will get cooler and i'm like no oh no oh no it will get cooler he didn't have to say that but i think we're all used to it by now that whatever is the provocative thing he's going to say it if there's a if there's a provocative way to say something in a non-provocative way you might get the provocative one now here's what's interesting my criticism of that is only in the way it's going to make people feel and you know the politics of it my criticism of that is not that he's wrong because my guess is that you know temperature will will probably modulate up and down i happen to be on the on the side that says in all likelihood temperatures are going up on average i don't think it's the end of the world i think we'll figure out how to mitigate and you know the disasters have gone down every year because we're better at managing everything from hurricanes to floods you name it forest fires even we're better at managing in a weird way there's more to that story but the point is that we would figure out how to deal with it even if it's getting warmer which it probably is the president goes for the provocative statement that it'll get cooler you just watch now is that true well it might we might have a few years where it's a little cooler on average but i don't think in the long term it's going to stay cool i could be wrong you know science science can surprise you but at this point i would say the the the weight of science suggests that the temperatures will probably go up we just don't know what that looks like all right so i wouldn't have said that if i were the president but i doubt it changes anything at this point and i would say this is another example where and i say this often if you think there's such a thing as a good president and a bad president i think you're wrong there's no such thing as a good president and a bad president there are presidents who are well suited to certain tasks and maybe not well suited for others the president is just absolutely not suited for anything but optimism he just doesn't have a non-optimism mode he doesn't give bad news now does that mean he's a bad president no it means for some things where maybe we should be a little more worried people would like to hear him give a little more negativity but if you want to get your economy back who do you want it's like ghostbusters it's like okay if you want some fake optimism about something he's just not always the right guy because sometimes things need to be treated more seriously but if you want to goose the economy if you want to get a peace deal with another country if you want to win three or four nobel prizes he's your guy nobody does what he does well better than he doesn't let me let me put it in let me frame it in the way you haven't heard me say before in my opinion the president is bad at easy stuff all right the president president trump in my opinion is bad bad does a bad job at easy things now an easy thing would be saying telling the country oh things are going to be bad i have great empathy for you let me say things about you know to end divisiveness etc all of the stuff that biden says every day is the easy stuff this president you know waves his hand at the easy stuff but i don't think he's good at it i don't think he's good at it but here's the thing the president and the reason that i've supported him from the start he can do things that are impossible so so here's the frame the president can do things that are literally just impossible he's just not good at things that are easy now the good news is the easy stuff doesn't seem to matter as much does it matter that he he turned the entire psychology of north korea around so that they're not really our enemy anymore yeah who thought he could do that it seemed impossible and then he did it did you think that there would be two peace deals in the middle east nope it seemed impossible and then he did it did you think that when he pulled the the forces out of the area that the kurds were in in syria and all the smart people said no no no they will be slaughtered that'll be the worst thing in the world and then it didn't happen it was impossible to pull our troops out without a slaughter and then he did it it was fine it was impossible to move the embassy to jerusalem he did it was impossible to recognize the golan heights and they just did it it was impossible to get unemployment down to what it was before the coronavirus and that he did it how about telehealth just just a tiny little example from a mountain of things that he changed with executive orders did you think it was possible that we would have telehealth that's now legal across state lines where it had been banned before i didn't think so i mean technically anything's possible but i didn't think it was going to happen and he just signed a piece of paper and it happened and that was like the law of the land essentially and so that's the frame not so good on little unimportant stuff that where you have to say things just the right way but when it comes to things that are literally literally considered impossible he does it routinely how do you not notice that right how do you not notice that somebody says where is kim jong-un i would have thought about that the other day i need a fact check on this but i think i saw the president the other day out of the blue with no prompting i don't think anybody even asked the question he tweeted that kim jong-un was completely healthy that happened right did we not see president trump tweeted that kim jong-un is healthy just the other day when nobody was questioning it what's that mean well i think it means that kim jong-un either asked for a favor because maybe he wanted that reported or the president is just clever enough that he knows that treating kim jong-un with even more respect than you'd expect giving him a little extra respect in public and basically having his back because that would be a case of having his back the president just stepped up and he just had kim jong-un's back now do you think that kim jong-un is healthy i don't i think that his sister maybe maybe is getting groomed to take over we we hear the reports of that there's probably something going on and it might be a pretty big deal so but the president played it perfectly played it perfectly he just give he just has the kim jong-uns back and that will be good for the country all right um the the thing that i wish trump had said about the forest fires is that we need nuclear energy but i think that's just sort of a people can't quite understand the topic yet probably 80 percent of the country still thinks you can't deal with the nuclear waste you can it's not that big a deal a lot of the country thinks it's dangerous it's not they just are not up to date and i think the president maybe just doesn't want that fight again i'm not a mind reader i would be only speculating but it would be the obvious thing to say and it would be provocative so you would expect him to go there but not here's something that somebody noticed when gavin newsom was blaming climate change for the fires if you see the map the fires go from the bottom of california to the the top of the country and then the fires of which there are i don't know dozens or hundreds and like the whole state of california looks like it's in fire in different places and you go right up to the border of canada and there's no fires so after the canadian border no fires now is the climate that different a mile on the other side of the border versus a mile on our side i don't think so i don't think it's that different so you have to ask yourself is it management of the forest or not now the thing that i would like to see is that our forests that have the biggest risk we should be cutting these 50-yard paths crisscrossing them so that there will be a natural fire break should something start but i would also like to see those 50-yard fire breaks through the forest turned into what what am i going to say why should all those fire breaks that we need to build across all these forests what should they be in addition to fire breaks that's right they should be bicycle paths you should be able to go anywhere in california on a bicycle without reaching traffic you should it just just be bicycle paths that are also coincidentally good for the forest could you charge people a toll to use the bicycle paths and use that money to help pay for the forest um forest fire forest fire remediation i would say yes if i could ride a hundred miles on a bicycle path through through cool woods and stuff you know as long as i had a paved path yeah i'd pay for that absolutely i'd pay for that a little bit of a toll um here's a here's an update cnn after reporting for months and months and months ish cnn's been reporting that every expert will tell you that mail-in votes are fine they're fine there's no problem with mail-in votes the president's a big old liar there's no problem mail-in votes they've worked in other countries they've worked in other states they've been working for years nobody's finding a problem therefore the president is completely wrong about the risk of mail-in votes well until yesterday when cnn here's the important part cnn is reporting that mail-in votes are a total nightmare and that they're completely inaccurate and there's plenty of evidence that they don't work what did you see that cnn just did a complete 180.

a complete 180.

and they act like they never said the other thing they just they just pretended that months of reporting about how safe it was just doesn't exist anymore and now the report is wait for it it gets better this isn't the whole story it gets better part of the report on cnn said that one of the reasons that mail-in votes are so inaccurate is and i quote one university of florida study found black and hispanic voters in the state were twice as likely to have their ballots rejected as white voters who could have seen that coming right now this doesn't have anything to do with being black or hispanic all right let me be clear about this this difference almost certainly has to do with economics almost certainly has to do with education which is related right so if you're in a low socio-economic group what are the odds that you're good at filling out paperwork right i have a terrible time filling out any paperwork even the simplest form i fill in the wrong blocks and i got the wrong date and i i signed my name in the wrong place so you would expect it's completely predictable that the higher educated you are regardless of ethnicity has nothing to do with that but the higher educated you are you would expect you're more likely to fill in a form correctly is that is that even controversial the more educated the more likely you can fill out a form the more likely you can do anything that requires a little bit of thinking so i wouldn't make this a uh a black and white or hispanic thing has more to do with education but the practical impact of it is that it's racist male massive mail-in votes are according to cnn this isn't me according to cnn mail-in votes the thing that they've been promoting for months are racist because that would be the outcome the black voters would be disenfranchised without knowing it because their votes would be rejected and they wouldn't know they were rejected all right here's an update on my who i call my smartest democrat friend who is suffering from tds here's a list of things he believed a few weeks ago all right these are all the things he believed to be true he believed that the president suggested drinking bleach to cure coronavirus not he believes the fine people hoax he believed that the biden doesn't lie trump does he believed that mail-in voting was dependable because cnn told them that last week before this week he uh let's see he believed that the protests were probably about trump you know trump was the cause of the protest uh he believed the russian bounties on american soldiers which a report today says they don't have evidence of that yet don't know if we ever will but they don't have evidence of it and he believed that he still believes as of this morning the hydroxyl chloroquine was proven dangerous so not so much that it doesn't work against chronovirus but he still believes as of today the coronavirus or that hydroxychloroquine was shown to be dangerous by science none of it's true absolutely none of it so i've been i've been chipping away at him so you know i sent him the reports about the uh the uvc light in a ventilator that's injecting a disinfectant so now now he understands that the drinking bleach thing was a hoax i also sent him the cnn update about the mail-in votes so now he believes that mail-in votes are in fact racist and undependable so once you take somebody's firm belief and you completely obliterate it what do they do do they say you know i was quite fooled by that fake news now that you've informed me i change my opinion and i acknowledge that you were right and man was i completely wrong up until now thank you for correcting me did that happen no no but here's the fun part what didn't happen is cognitive dissonance cognitive dissonance is when somebody finds their world view is wrong and then they just spout word salad instead he simply softly redirected the conversation and here was his answer uh he talked about voting rights as a partisan issue he talked about vote suppression and how not enough people vote so his answer to everything you believe from the news about mail and voting being dependable from the same sources that told you was dependable they now say unambiguously it's a mess he didn't say oh gosh i was wrong he said there are other problems with voting unrelated now what that means is and if you study persuasion you can kind of see where this is going that is somebody who's been persuaded someone who has not been persuaded would say something still on the topic but it just wouldn't make sense here he's saying things that make complete sense but he's quite intentionally changed the conversation without without mentioning it that means bullseye that he understands that he has been fooled and i gave him some other debunks we'll see if that makes any difference um i still think the biggest issue about the coronavirus is the question of whether the president did enough testing and when i found out more about other countries and how they did allegedly superior testing i say to myself let's dig into that a little bit why is it that some other country did better testing then here's south korea the reason that south korea did so well in testing there was a private company who when the news first came out about the coronavirus they realized that they had the capability to quickly and ahead of time i think they started in january maybe even sooner i think they started in january but they quickly ramped up because they were a private company and apparently there was nothing stopping them from doing it so they ramped up now would you say then that south korea their leadership did better than the united states to which i say well okay you're not analyzing this right if that private company that did so well and did a really good job in south korea what if that was just an american company what if an american company had been as clever as this private company would an american company have said you know they haven't asked for it yet but i'm going to get busy on this because i think there could be a billion dollar opportunity so we're just going to we're just going to start making test kits nobody asked us to it's not approved by the fda or the cdc but we're going to do it is that a leadership thing because i'm not sure that leadership is even part of the question if south korea got their solution because a private company acted both aggressively and early and wisely it took a good risk management approach that was probably good for their profits as well that has nothing to do with management that's nothing to do with leadership they just had a company that was pretty smart i think germany had a similar situation in which they just had i think germany had a private company that was also big in this space so the private company was able to do something quickly with testing now in the united states i don't know the full detail but i guess the cdc's kits were incomplete it didn't have all the parts so there was a part where the cdc fell apart but where were our private companies i think our private companies were probably limited by maybe fda and cdc red tape so if there's a criticism about the president and there could be by the way i just don't quite understand this this issue yet if there's an issue with president trump's performance i would think it would be in the in the area of not getting rid of red tape maybe maybe there was something our private companies couldn't do fast enough because maybe they were barred from doing it is that a thing so um there are a lot of people will base their decision on what they believe about the president's leadership on testing and they won't know anything about what actually happened they won't know that it was probably just private companies making good decisions in other countries that might be it that could be the whole story we don't know uh christopher ruffo is reporting that you know we thought that the president did a executive order banning critical race theory training but apparently the cdc is just going to move ahead and do it anyway so the cdc is going to have training classes on critical race theory i think they tried to finesse it by not calling it that but it is and i have to wonder at what point does this go to the supreme court at what point does the supreme court say you can't teach this critical race theory stuff because it's just racist because it is racist it's obviously racist it's gigantically racist so what is that going to happen all right um would you like to be scared about the future of humankind i can deliver that and it goes like this in my opinion the protests and riots that you're seeing around the country could not happen without artificial intelligence now there could have been some protests there might have been some things but in terms of the extent of what we're seeing and the way it's affecting the country we would not have this if not for ai here's what i mean now you're going to tell me but scott the kind of ai we have now in our algorithms etc is still controlled by people people program them people tweak them it's people people making decisions they're just using ai as a convenient tool that i believe is a mistake in perception what's really while it is true that the humans are tweaking them the way you know in a variety of ways what's also true is the algorithm forces the humans to do what the humans do once the algorithm through trial and error has determined what gets you the most profit the human doesn't have a choice of not following it because the human will be fired if they don't pursue profit so you say to yourself but the human has a choice they don't have to do what the ai says just because the ai says let's feed these ads or this this news to people because it'll get them all worked up and they'll be angry and then they'll click more the human you could say in some technical sense they could decide not to do it but then they would be fired and then the next person would do it so you don't really in a practical sense have any way to fight the artificial intelligence once it decides that this is how you make money you're going to do it that's the way humans are wired so we are already at the point where ai controls humanity you know a lot of people are worried like what happens someday when the ai gets smart enough that you know it's it's sentient and then it's making our decisions well i don't think you could argue it's sentient but it's already making the decisions that is literally true ai is determining how mad you are what news you saw and what you clicked on and that will determine the government because our government has to react to what the the news and the public collectively want right the government in some cases you know in limited cases can do something the public isn't demanding but for the most part they have to do what the public demands and the public is only demanding what the news and social media tells them to think and it always does that because the ai is telling them what to think so for all practical practical purposes artificial intelligence is running the united states it is that it's already done so there's that um bloom mike bloomberg is going to spend 100 million dollars in florida trying to make sure that the democrats win florida and i i thought to myself all right i believe in free speech and people should be able to use their money the way they want but when when the founders of this country were designing a system at what point did they understand that one person could spend a hundred million dollars in a swing state and determine the election would that be legal do you think if the founders knew that could have happened i mean i don't think they could have conceived of somebody with so much money that would have been hard to imagine although you could argue that george washington was one of the richest people in the world if you normalize it but why is that legal i understand that it is legal but shouldn't we look into that a little bit could you know i feel like there should be some kind of limit on what one person can do you know if you said to me well mike bloomberg can put in up to 10 million dollars that's still a ton of money but i'd say all right all right because there'll be other billionaires that put 10 million the other way but to have one person put a 100 million into one swing state or one that could be a swing state that's that's a big risk to the republic i'm surprised that that's legal all right um that is all i wanted to talk about somebody says you don't even vote so this year i am going to vote i registered to vote this year the only reason i'm registering to vote this year is first self-defense because i do think that this is this year is unusual and i think that anybody who supported trump would be in a lot of trouble if he doesn't win there could be violence there could be discrimination there could be any any norm any number of things that could be bad so just for self-defense i'll be voting for trump there you go all right um what does he get in return what does bloomberg get in return yeah it's a good question isn't it somebody says kimberly's son was from a prior managed marriage you mean before gavin newsom we'll do a fact check on that because i might be wrong about her her son but there's still there's still a connection with gavin newsom even if it's indirect all right the slaughter meter is the slaughter meter is at about 200 percent at the moment um almost every day that goes by it looks better for trump and worse for biden and i until that changes this slaughter meter said about 200 all right that's all i got for now and i will talk to you later

[Music]

yes there we are again

smoky california i hope uh many of you

live in states where you can

breathe the air and do all those things

but i don't

so it looks like it's going to be weeks

of breathing whatever that is out there

so i'm basically on house arrest

i've got a little asthma issue so i

can't go outside

basically i'm just locked inside for

weeks

weeks and weeks but do i mind

not what i have all of you here no

no it's all good when you're here and

i gotta tell you i i can't quite appreci

um i don't think i could communicate how

much i appreciate

the time we spend together in the

morning during this

coronavirus situation and now the

wildfires

i gotta say it really helps it really

helps to have this connection with

all of you and speaking of connections

wouldn't you like to enjoy the

simultaneous sip all you need is a

copper mugger glass a tanker chelsea

stein a canteen jugger flask

a vessel of any kind fill it with your

favorite liquid

i like coffee and join me now for the

unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine

hit of the day the thing that makes

everything better it's called the

simultaneous step it happens now

go

shall we start with the good news

everybody everybody wants some good news

all right we'll start with that

there's a report that the university of

pittsburgh

scientists have discovered a biomolecule

biomolecule you know

you should probably practice saying

biomolecule

before you say it out loud for the first

time in your entire life

i have never said the word biomolecule

out loud until just this moment and

well it wasn't it wasn't smooth but

anyway this

biomolecule may neutralize coronavirus

so it's not a vaccine it would be

some kind of biomolecule if it works

apparently it works in animals which

generally is not enough to get excited

there are a lot of things work in

animals

that don't work in people but this

particular

biomolecule and come on you've probably

just said

biomolecule at home just to see if you

could do it didn't you

you did say it out loud biomolecule

and apparently it's in the sort of

general category of things

that are generally safe so it

seems to just rapidly just absolutely

whack the coronavirus

the end and uh

looks promising so we might have

something that's

i don't know how long it would take to

test this but seems promising

my favorite story of the day is uh

internet

uh troll jacob wall

faked an fbi

and an fbi raid on

some guy i think he works with jack

burkman

and so the washington post actually

picked it up as a real story

and i have to admit as fakes go

this was really well done because the

the videos and the pictures of what

looked to be

it really looked like an fba fbi

raid somehow they got fbi jackets and

they

i think they hired actors or something

and he puts on this whole fake fbi raid

and the washington post reported it like

it was real

daily beast was on to him a little bit

early so

that's funny uh now i don't know why

you know i i can't figure out the next

part

you know i understand the part about

okay internet troll

puts on a prank it's not his first rank

and

and it worked really well but was that

the only point

was he just trying to see if he could

get the the news to report

fake news i don't know i'm not sure what

the point of that was

um there will be some interesting news

coming out of

rasmussen a little later today i got a

little heads up

um i won't give you the details but let

me just give you a little tease

so rasmussen of course does polling

and you're going to find out some

details about this but it turns out

and this might come as a surprise to you

this might come as a big surprise so

you know put your seatbelt on because

you're never going to believe this

it turns out that anybody who lived in a

town that had

protest slash riots

not happy about it they're just not

happy about it

and will will it affect their votes

well turns out yes

yes so the people who live in places

affected by the

riots looting slash protesting not so

much the peaceful protesting but

everything that often comes with it

those people

are not happy not happy

and here's the part you didn't know

because

it there are so many protests and

they concentrated on the population

centers

if you said to yourself well if you

added together the entire

real estate that every protest was taken

in the united states

it would be like a pin brick on the big

united states

in terms of space that they occupied you

know

a few streets in each city you know

0.001

of the real estate was affected by these

protests

but it's not really about real estate is

it

it's about people if you happen to live

near

or within driving distance of where

there was looting

it changed your vote not every time

but man people are pissed so where do

you see the details in that

but the biggest news is well let me put

this in

another context as impossible

as this might seem by november

we might be kind of over the coronavirus

i don't mean

over it medically i don't mean over it

in terms of the economy being back to

normal

we won't be over it in terms of what

it's doing to us

but quoting my late mother

who taught me one of the most valuable

things you'll ever know about people

and goes like this if you want to

understand humans

here's the thing we can get used to

anything

including hanging that was her little

saying

you can get used to anything so the

problem with the coronavirus

from the democrats point of view is that

they have this complaint

about the president not handling it the

way they wish it would have been handled

but it's really going to seem like old

news by november

even while we're still experiencing it

because whatever happened in april

it just feels like a hundred years ago

already

and we'll talk a little bit more about

that but um

don't discount the fact that you simply

get used to the coronavirus you just get

used to it

and then whatever is happening at the

moment artificially takes a bigger role

because you were you know just got used

to the other thing so if the protests

are still happening and there's still

new news about it and there's new video

every day

which seems to be the case people are

going to vote

on the protests way more than they're

going to vote on coronavirus

it'll have only to do with the fact that

you just got used to one

and you haven't yet got used to the

other one

all right

let's see uh i want to give you a little

context about

what makes me look at the world a little

differently than other people

i get asked about this a lot people say

to me

scott scott what happened to you that

makes you see the world

differently and i've noticed that there

are people who took

what i would call my journey people who

coincidentally were doing

similar things and had similar

experiences often think the same way i

do

and i thought it'd be useful to show you

what that looks like

here is my path to understanding reality

when i was a little kid i loved optical

illusions

and i loved the fact that your brain had

this

this blind spot you could be looking at

an illusion

and even though you know it's really not

that it looks like it

and so i was always fascinated by how

how easily the brain could be fooled

by an optical illusion something you're

looking right at

then then i started noticing that people

had different religions

i was learning one religion but people

had different ones and i

and even at the young age of 11 i'd be

saying to myself

um okay there i don't know what's going

on

here because these religions are

completely different so

even if i imagine i got lucky

and i got the right one so luckily i was

born into the family that

that had the right religion and all the

other people were getting the wrong

religion

but or maybe everybody had the wrong

religion so there were possibilities but

the one thing i can say for sure

is that everybody who had a different

religion

you could tell that we were not basing

our decisions on

religion on facts so much or at least

not all of the world so we could see the

people would believe

just about anything didn't know who was

right and who was wrong

but it was pretty obvious that billions

of humans who are otherwise normal

can believe just about anything

then i got interested in magic when i

was a little chat

a little kid doing magic tricks and you

start learning

that there are there are predictable

let's say blocks in your brain

there are predictable gaps and blind

spots

so you can craft a variety of different

magic

tricks that take advantage of weaknesses

and perception

now once you start doing enough magic

tricks and you see

you start seeing all the weaknesses and

perception

it changes how you see the world and you

start saying well

if you know if magic tricks can fool

people so easily

maybe i should look into this a little

more i started looking into hypnosis and

then persuasion

and by the time i started analyzing fake

news

i gotta tell you it was easier

it was easier to analyze fake news

and let me give you an example of what

learning magic tricks does if you can

see this here's a penny

all right it's just a penny you can see

it there's nothing in this hand

watch this i'm going to take this penny

i'm just going to put my finger on it

and i'm going to squeeze it until it

becomes a quarter

now sh

you didn't hear that so

learning how easily people could get

fooled primed

me for looking at the fake news there is

a news or there's a little clip that

went around

twitter today that i recognized

immediately as

fake news and it was a clip of biden on

the view from 2019

and the clip was it felt to me like it

was obviously edited

to take out all of his coherent

statements and kind of string together

a whole bunch of hesitant you know

incoherent things

now he is a little bit hesitant and

incoherent

but it was clearly edited to get rid of

all the coherent

parts now i point that out because it's

the same trick

done by the fine people hoax

and what did people say when they saw

the fine people oaks and i said hey

that's a hoax

they all said the same thing the ones

who had been fooled by the hoax

to a person they said scott

it's not a hoax i watched it

i saw it with my own eyes heard it with

my own

ears is real

but then what about this biden video you

watched it with your own eyes

you heard it with your own ears but it's

not real

somebody helpfully showed the the full

video so you can see that it was

doctored

it's just like the magic trick right

you saw a penny in my hand so

it was a penny had to be a penny you saw

it

saw it with your own eyes but it was

just a magic trick

once your brain is primed for looking

for the magic trick you can see it a lot

easier

so um here's here's the correlation

people who were

interested in magic tricks when they

were kids

watch for this correlation they're less

easily fooled by fake news

because they're just primed for it

all right uh the best freudian slip of

the day

was kamala harris referring to quote a

harris administration

and then she corrected it together with

joe biden

so here's what she'll do with a harris

administration uh

together with joe biden now what did i

teach you

before this happened all right if you've

been watching my periscopes you know

one of the things you learn in hypnosis

class

is that these are not accidents now the

first

i don't know a hundred times you see

somebody misspeak

you say to yourself okay that's like a

funny coincidence

because when they misspoke they said

something that it felt like they were

revealing some inner truth but you know

it's just

they just used the wrong word nope

nope once you start paying attention

you'll see it's not an accident now i'm

not going to say it's never an accident

my claim will be that in general it's

actually meaningful

not a hundred percent of the time but it

is more meaningful than not

do you think it's an accident that

kamala harris referred to

a harris administration you don't say

that

out loud unless you've been thinking it

unless it's been part of a conversation

so i think she has revealed

that at the very least there's a

conversation going

about getting rid of biden or how long

you last or something along those

lines um

there's a story which didn't get big

news

i don't know if the major news covered

it but there is a

research institute and a researcher who

is making a claim

that the coronavirus that came out of

the allegedly came out of the

wuhan lab had to be artificial

that's pretty big news right there's a

researcher who seems to know this field

who has a claim that it could not have

been a naturally occurring virus

and that she can tell you exactly how

they made it

now that's a pretty big claim not only

is she saying

that it's man-made but she's claiming

she could make it herself

in other words she already knows the

components if you take this

you take this i think she said in six

months you could make this thing

is that true well i don't know if it's

true but

there's a claim today that the research

institute

had some connection with steve bannon

now steve bannon

has been hammering on china for the

wuhan

you know coronavirus so

that's a little flag you have to ask

yourself huh

why is this not you know the headline

news

and the answer is uh i guess the news

business has decided it's not

entirely credible that doesn't mean it's

false

remember whenever i use the word

credible that doesn't mean true or false

it just means that the nature of it

tells you to be cautious about believing

it that's all

so we'll keep an eye on that um

so here's here's another magic trick and

something that people study magic would

see the

antifa are using a magic trick now most

of you know this

which is and the magic trick is that

they

they name themselves auntie pha and then

they say don't you get it

we're anti-fascists so therefore if

you're against

us you must be a fascist now that's a

magic trick

to force you into thinking a certain way

the real trick is that capitalism and

fascism are the same thing

that's the magic trick so instead of

saying hey

we're going to destroy all capitalism

which you might say to yourself um that

sounds pretty bad

because i'm pretty sure if you destroy

capitalism

we all die or were conquered by china

et cetera and

but the anti-fog gets to say oh

capitalism

who said capitalism i said anti-fascist

i didn't even mention capitalism what's

what's capitalism got to do with it

but here's here's how you know that's

the magic trick

have you ever seen the regular news

interview somebody from

antifa and ask him this question

can you tell us is there such a thing as

a capitalist

system that you would not consider

fascist there isn't

bernie sanders vision of a socialist

version of capitalism would still be

fascist

and this is the thing that the news if

they did their job if if we had a real

news

business they would be calling anti-fall

leaders or

representatives just somebody who could

you know i realize they don't have

leaders in the traditional sense that

they're they're public and identified

they do have some kind of coordination

but they don't seem to have anybody was

the spokesperson

but still you could find people who

would be willing to talk about it

so if we had a real news business they

would call them on and they say

trying to understand anti-fascist

so i have one question could there ever

be a capitalist system

that is not fascist and the answer is

not really

now they might try to finesse it by

saying sure sure

you know if you did everything right but

you really can't build that system

because it would remove incentives

human incentives so it would it would

fall apart

so the fact that this dog is not barking

meaning that the news business

is not giving you any any look

not an approximate one not a not a

glance

not anything about what does that mean

to be anti-fascist

nothing it's just not a topic

that tells you that the magic trick is

working

because as soon as they focused on it it

would fall apart

uh all right um do you remember

some of the things that i said in the

beginning of the coronavirus

i told you i thought vitamin d would be

important and now studies seem to be

validating the vitamin d might be

not just important but like really

really important

it's unconfirmed but it's looking that

way and

now there's a forthcoming study from

23andme

showing that your genetic code could

affect

how how much the coronavirus affects you

so remember i told you early on you know

i've got a feeling there's a genetic

correlation here and that if we knew

what that genetic correlation was

we could do way better in protecting

ourselves because we'd know who needs to

be protected

and now sure enough so i say this

because

i always tell you that you should watch

who is predicting well

so on day one practically i was saying

look at genetics

look at vitamin d and

correct correct so

so you have to give me you give me those

check marks that doesn't mean i'm right

on everything and when i'm wrong you

should point it out

and yeah obesity and being

african-american and you know a whole

bunch of

things that increase your risk all right

trump talked to

was in california yesterday talking to

gavin newsom and people about the

forest fires etc now here's a little

fact

that you may not have processed when

you're watching that

it's kind of interesting that trump and

gavin newsom

treat each other with an unusual amount

of respect

wouldn't you say you know they they

differ no doubt

about that but there is there's a level

of respect there that you don't really

it fools you a little bit because he

doesn't seem to be as nice to

every other governor but he's really

nice to gavin newsom

and vice versa but you might not know

that gavin newsom's ex-wife kimberly

guilfoyle

is has of course been with don jr in a

relationship for some time now

and i'm pretty sure fact check me on

this i think that gavin newsom

and kimberly guilfoyle have children

right or one child

i don't know what the situation is but

at least one which would mean that

president trump basically

has a um in effect you know that

who knows what the relationship will

will be in the future

but in effect it's like he has a

grandchild

in law what would you call it you know a

virtual

grandchild his stepson a great a step

grandchildren or something

so gavin newsom and president trump

share family they actually share family

and i think that you have to really have

that filter on

when you see how they interact with each

other

i'm getting confirmation that they they

have a son

and you can't you can't discount how

important that is the the personal

relationship and the president

has been always good with the personal

relationships anyway

what's interesting here is that uh

gavin newsom was very diplomatic by

saying

yes forest management is a thing that

needs to be done better i think we'd all

agree

but he asked the president to be

open-minded

to the difference of opinion about the

importance of climate change

and he the way he worded it was just

really good i

have to admit really good in the sense

that he needed to be

super diplomatic but still get his point

across

i think he did i'd say that

communication wise he did a good job

and then the president because he can't

go five minutes without controversy

i you know i listened to this and i was

thinking to myself

don't say it don't say it

you know don't talk about trump i'm

waiting for him to respond about the

climate

change stuff and the whole time i'm just

no

don't do it don't do it and then the

president smiles and he goes

he goes uh it will get cooler and i'm

like

no oh no oh no

it will get cooler he didn't have to say

that

but i think we're all used to it by now

that whatever is the provocative thing

he's going to say it

if there's a if there's a provocative

way to say something in a

non-provocative way

you might get the provocative one

now here's what's interesting my

criticism of that is only in the way

it's going to make people feel

and you know the politics of it my

criticism of that

is not that he's wrong because my guess

is

that you know temperature will will

probably modulate up and down

i happen to be on the on the side that

says in all likelihood

temperatures are going up on average i

don't think it's the end of the world i

think we'll figure out how to mitigate

and

you know the disasters have gone down

every year

because we're better at managing

everything from hurricanes to floods

you name it forest fires even we're

better at managing in a weird way

there's more to that story but the point

is that we would figure

out how to deal with it even if it's

getting warmer

which it probably is the president

goes for the provocative statement that

it'll get cooler

you just watch now is that true

well it might we might have a few years

where it's a little cooler

on average but i don't think in the long

term it's going to stay cool

i could be wrong you know science

science can surprise you but at this

point i would say the

the the weight of science suggests that

the temperatures will probably go up

we just don't know what that looks like

all right so i wouldn't have said that

if i were the president but i doubt it

changes anything at this point

and i would say this is another example

where and i say this often

if you think there's such a thing as a

good president

and a bad president i think you're wrong

there's no such thing as a good

president and a bad president

there are presidents who are well suited

to certain tasks

and maybe not well suited for others the

president

is just absolutely not suited

for anything but optimism he just

doesn't have a non-optimism mode

he doesn't give bad news now

does that mean he's a bad president no

it means for some things where maybe we

should be a little more worried

people would like to hear him give a

little more negativity

but if you want to get your economy back

who do you want it's like ghostbusters

it's like okay if you want some fake

optimism about something

he's just not always the right guy

because sometimes things need to be

treated more seriously

but if you want to goose the economy if

you want to get

a peace deal with another country if you

want to win

three or four nobel prizes he's your guy

nobody does what he does well

better than he doesn't let me let me put

it in let me frame it in the way you

haven't heard me say before

in my opinion the president is bad at

easy stuff

all right the president president trump

in my opinion

is bad bad does a bad job

at easy things now an easy thing would

be

saying telling the country oh things are

going to be bad

i have great empathy for you let me say

things about

you know to end divisiveness etc

all of the stuff that biden says every

day

is the easy stuff this president

you know waves his hand at the easy

stuff but i don't think he's good at it

i don't think he's good at it but here's

the thing

the president and the reason that i've

supported him from

the start he can do things that are

impossible

so so here's the frame the president can

do things that are literally just

impossible

he's just not good at things that are

easy

now the good news is the easy stuff

doesn't seem to matter as much

does it matter that he he turned

the entire psychology of north korea

around

so that they're not really our enemy

anymore yeah

who thought he could do that it seemed

impossible

and then he did it did you think that

there would be two

peace deals in the middle east nope

it seemed impossible and then he did it

did you think that when he pulled the

the forces

out of the area that the kurds were in

in syria

and all the smart people said no no no

they will be slaughtered that'll be the

worst thing in the world

and then it didn't happen it was

impossible

to pull our troops out without a

slaughter and then he did it

it was fine it was impossible to move

the embassy to jerusalem he did it was

impossible to recognize

the golan heights and they just did it

it was impossible to get

unemployment down to what it was before

the coronavirus

and that he did it how about

telehealth just just a tiny little

example

from a mountain of things that he

changed with executive orders

did you think it was possible that we

would have

telehealth that's now legal across state

lines where it had been banned before

i didn't think so i mean technically

anything's possible

but i didn't think it was going to

happen and he just

signed a piece of paper and it happened

and that was like the law of the land

essentially

and so that's the frame not so good on

little unimportant stuff that where you

have to say things just the right way

but when it comes to things that are

literally

literally considered impossible

he does it routinely how do you not

notice that right how do you not notice

that

somebody says where is kim jong-un

i would have thought about that the

other day i need a fact check on this

but i think i saw the president the

other day

out of the blue with no prompting i

don't think anybody even asked the

question

he tweeted that kim jong-un was

completely healthy

that happened right did we not see

president trump tweeted that kim jong-un

is healthy just the other day

when nobody was questioning it

what's that mean well i think it means

that kim jong-un either asked for a

favor

because maybe he wanted that reported or

the president is just

clever enough that he knows

that treating kim jong-un with even more

respect than you'd expect

giving him a little extra respect in

public

and basically having his back because

that would be a case of having his back

the president just stepped up and he

just had kim jong-un's back

now do you think that kim jong-un is

healthy i don't

i think that his sister maybe

maybe is getting groomed to take over we

we hear the reports of that there's

probably something going on

and it might be a pretty big deal so but

the president played it perfectly

played it perfectly he just give he just

has the kim jong-uns back

and that will be good for the country

all right um the the thing that i wish

trump had said about the forest fires is

that we need nuclear energy

but i think that's just sort of a people

can't quite understand the topic yet

probably 80 percent of the country still

thinks you can't deal with the nuclear

waste you can it's not that big a deal

a lot of the country thinks it's

dangerous

it's not they just are not up to date

and i think the president maybe just

doesn't want that fight

again i'm not a mind reader i would be

only speculating

but it would be the obvious thing to say

and it would be provocative so you would

expect him to go there

but not here's something that somebody

noticed

when gavin newsom was blaming climate

change for the fires

if you see the map the fires go from

the bottom of california to the the top

of

the country and then the fires of which

there are i don't know dozens or

hundreds

and like the whole state of california

looks like it's in fire in different

places

and you go right up to the border of

canada and there's no fires

so after the canadian border no fires

now is the climate that different

a mile on the other side of the border

versus a mile

on our side i don't think so

i don't think it's that different so you

have to ask yourself is it

management of the forest or not now

the thing that i would like to see is

that our forests that have the biggest

risk

we should be cutting these 50-yard paths

crisscrossing them so that there will be

a natural fire break should something

start

but i would also like to see those

50-yard fire breaks through the forest

turned into what what am i going to say

why should all those fire breaks that we

need to build across all these forests

what should they be in addition to fire

breaks

that's right they should be bicycle

paths you should be able to go

anywhere in california on a bicycle

without reaching traffic

you should it just just be bicycle paths

that are also

coincidentally good for the forest

could you charge people a toll to use

the bicycle paths

and use that money to help pay for the

forest um

forest fire forest fire remediation

i would say yes if i could ride a

hundred miles on a bicycle path through

through cool woods and stuff you know as

long as i had a paved path

yeah i'd pay for that absolutely i'd pay

for that a little bit of a toll

um here's a

here's an update cnn after reporting for

months and months and months

ish cnn's been reporting that every

expert will tell you that mail-in votes

are fine

they're fine there's no problem with

mail-in votes the president's a big old

liar

there's no problem mail-in votes they've

worked in other countries they've worked

in other states

they've been working for years nobody's

finding a problem

therefore the president is completely

wrong about the risk of mail-in votes

well until yesterday when cnn

here's the important part cnn is

reporting

that mail-in votes are a total nightmare

and that they're completely inaccurate

and there's plenty of evidence that they

don't work

what did you see that

cnn just did a complete 180.

a complete 180. and they act like

they never said the other thing they

just

they just pretended that months of

reporting about how safe it was

just doesn't exist anymore and now the

report is

wait for it it gets better this isn't

the whole story

it gets better part of the report on cnn

said that one of the reasons that

mail-in votes are so

inaccurate is and i quote

one university of florida study found

black and hispanic voters in the state

were twice as likely to have their

ballots rejected

as white voters

who could have seen that coming

right now this doesn't have anything to

do with being black or hispanic

all right let me be clear about this

this difference almost certainly has to

do with

economics almost certainly has to do

with education which is related right

so if you're in a low socio-economic

group

what are the odds that you're good at

filling out paperwork

right i have a terrible time filling out

any paperwork

even the simplest form i fill in the

wrong blocks and i got the wrong date

and i

i signed my name in the wrong place

so you would expect it's completely

predictable

that the higher educated you are

regardless of ethnicity has nothing to

do with that

but the higher educated you are

you would expect you're more likely to

fill in a form

correctly is that is that even

controversial

the more educated the more likely you

can fill out a form

the more likely you can do anything that

requires a little bit of thinking

so i wouldn't make this a uh

a black and white or hispanic thing has

more to do with education

but the practical impact of it is that

it's racist

male massive mail-in votes are

according to cnn this isn't me

according to cnn mail-in votes the thing

that they've been promoting for months

are racist because that would be the

outcome the black voters would be

disenfranchised

without knowing it because their votes

would be rejected and they wouldn't know

they were rejected

all right here's an update on my who i

call my smartest

democrat friend who is suffering from

tds

here's a list of things he believed a

few weeks ago

all right these are all the things he

believed to be true

he believed that the president suggested

drinking bleach to cure coronavirus

not he believes the fine people hoax he

believed that

the biden doesn't lie trump does

he believed that mail-in voting was

dependable because cnn told them that

last week

before this week

he uh let's see he believed that the

protests were probably about

trump you know trump was the cause of

the protest

uh he believed the russian bounties on

american soldiers which

a report today says they don't have

evidence of that yet

don't know if we ever will but they

don't have evidence of it

and he believed that he still believes

as of this morning

the hydroxyl chloroquine was proven

dangerous

so not so much that it doesn't work

against chronovirus

but he still believes as of today the

coronavirus or that hydroxychloroquine

was shown to be dangerous by science

none of it's true absolutely none of it

so i've been

i've been chipping away at him so you

know i sent him the reports about the

uh the uvc light in a ventilator

that's injecting a disinfectant so now

now he understands

that the drinking bleach thing was a

hoax

i also sent him the cnn update about the

mail-in votes

so now he believes that mail-in votes

are in fact

racist and undependable so once you take

somebody's firm belief

and you completely obliterate it what do

they do

do they say you know i was quite fooled

by that fake news

now that you've informed me i change my

opinion

and i acknowledge that you were right

and man was i completely wrong

up until now thank you for correcting me

did that happen

no no but here's the fun part

what didn't happen is cognitive

dissonance

cognitive dissonance is when somebody

finds their world view is wrong and then

they just spout word salad

instead he simply softly redirected the

conversation

and here was his answer uh he talked

about

voting rights as a partisan issue he

talked about vote suppression

and how not enough people vote so

his answer to everything you believe

from the news about mail and voting

being dependable from the same sources

that told you was dependable

they now say unambiguously it's a mess

he didn't say oh gosh i was wrong

he said there are other problems with

voting unrelated

now what that means is and if you study

persuasion you can

kind of see where this is going that is

somebody who's been persuaded

someone who has not been persuaded would

say something still on the topic but it

just wouldn't make sense

here he's saying things that make

complete sense but he's quite

intentionally changed the conversation

without

without mentioning it that means

bullseye

that he understands that he has been

fooled

and i gave him some other debunks we'll

see if that makes any difference

um i still think the biggest issue about

the coronavirus is the question of

whether the president did enough testing

and when i found out more about other

countries

and how they did allegedly superior

testing i say to myself let's dig into

that a little bit

why is it that some other country did

better testing

then here's south korea the reason that

south korea did so well in testing

there was a private company who when the

news first came out about the

coronavirus they realized that they had

the capability to

quickly and ahead of time i think they

started in

january maybe even sooner i think they

started in january

but they quickly ramped up because they

were a private company

and apparently there was nothing

stopping them from doing it

so they ramped up now would you say then

that south korea their leadership did

better

than the united states to which i say

well

okay you're not analyzing this right if

that private company

that did so well and did a really good

job in south korea

what if that was just an american

company what if an

american company had been as clever as

this private company

would an american company have said you

know they haven't asked for it yet but

i'm going to get busy on this because i

think there could be a billion dollar

opportunity

so we're just going to we're just going

to start making test kits

nobody asked us to it's not approved by

the fda or the cdc

but we're going to do it

is that a leadership thing because i'm

not sure that leadership is even

part of the question if south korea got

their solution because a private company

acted both aggressively and early and

wisely

it took a good risk management approach

that was probably good for their profits

as well

that has nothing to do with management

that's nothing to do with leadership

they just had a company that was pretty

smart

i think germany had a similar situation

in which they just had i think germany

had a private company that

was also big in this space so the

private company

was able to do something quickly with

testing

now in the united states i don't know

the full detail but i guess the cdc's

kits were incomplete

it didn't have all the parts so there

was a part where the cdc fell apart

but where were our private companies i

think our private companies were

probably limited by

maybe fda and cdc

red tape so if there's a criticism about

the president

and there could be by the way i just

don't quite understand this this issue

yet

if there's an issue with president

trump's performance

i would think it would be in the in the

area of

not getting rid of red tape maybe maybe

there was something our private

companies couldn't do

fast enough because maybe they were

barred from doing it

is that a thing so um

there are a lot of people will base

their decision on what they believe

about the president's leadership

on testing and they won't know anything

about what actually happened

they won't know that it was probably

just private companies making good

decisions

in other countries that might be it that

could be the whole story

we don't know uh christopher ruffo

is reporting that you know we thought

that the president

did a executive order banning critical

race theory training

but apparently the cdc is just going to

move ahead and do it anyway

so the cdc is going to have training

classes on critical race theory i think

they tried to

finesse it by not calling it that but it

is

and i have to wonder at what point does

this go to the supreme

court at what point does the supreme

court say

you can't teach this critical race

theory stuff because it's just racist

because it is racist it's obviously

racist it's

gigantically racist so what is that

going to happen

all right um would you like to be

scared about the future of humankind i

can deliver that

and it goes like this in my opinion

the protests and riots that you're

seeing around the country

could not happen without artificial

intelligence

now there could have been some protests

there might have been some things but in

terms of the extent of what we're seeing

and the way it's affecting the country

we would not have this if not for ai

here's what i mean now you're going to

tell me but scott

the kind of ai we have now in our

algorithms etc

is still controlled by people people

program them

people tweak them it's people people

making decisions they're just using ai

as a

convenient tool that i believe

is a mistake in perception what's really

while it is true that the

humans are tweaking them the way you

know in a variety of ways

what's also true is the algorithm forces

the humans to do what the humans do

once the algorithm through trial and

error has determined what gets you the

most profit

the human doesn't have a choice of not

following it because the human will be

fired

if they don't pursue profit so you say

to yourself but the human has a choice

they don't have to do what the ai says

just because the ai says

let's feed these ads or this this news

to people because it'll get them all

worked up and

they'll be angry and then they'll click

more the human

you could say in some technical sense

they could decide not to do it

but then they would be fired and then

the next person would do it

so you don't really in a practical sense

have any way to fight the artificial

intelligence

once it decides that this is how you

make money

you're going to do it that's the way

humans are wired

so we are already at the point

where ai controls

humanity you know a lot of people are

worried like what happens someday

when the ai gets smart enough that you

know it's

it's sentient and then it's making our

decisions well i don't think you could

argue it's

sentient but it's already making the

decisions

that is literally true ai is determining

how mad you are what news you saw

and what you clicked on and that will

determine the government

because our government has to react to

what the the news and the public

collectively want right the government

in

some cases you know in limited cases can

do something the public isn't demanding

but for the most part

they have to do what the public demands

and the public is only demanding

what the news and social media tells

them to think

and it always does that because the ai

is telling them what to think

so for all practical practical purposes

artificial intelligence is running the

united states

it is that it's already done so

there's that um

bloom mike bloomberg is going to spend

100 million dollars

in florida trying to make sure that the

democrats win florida

and i i thought to myself all right i

believe in free speech and people should

be able to use their money the way they

want

but when when the founders of this

country were designing a system

at what point did they understand that

one person could spend a hundred million

dollars in a swing state and determine

the election

would that be legal do you think

if the founders knew that could have

happened i mean i don't think they could

have conceived

of somebody with so much money that

would have been hard to imagine

although you could argue that george

washington was one of the richest people

in the world

if you normalize it

[Music]

but why is that legal

i understand that it is legal but

shouldn't we look into that a little bit

could you know i feel like there should

be some kind of

limit on what one person can do you know

if you said to me well

mike bloomberg can put in up to 10

million dollars that's still a ton of

money

but i'd say all right all right because

there'll be other billionaires that put

10 million the other way

but to have one person put a 100 million

into one swing state or one that could

be a swing state

that's that's a big risk to the republic

i'm surprised that that's legal

all right um that

is all i wanted to talk about somebody

says you don't even vote

so this year i am going to vote i

registered to vote this year

the only reason i'm registering to vote

this year is first self-defense

because i do think that this is this

year is unusual

and i think that anybody who supported

trump

would be in a lot of trouble if he

doesn't win

there could be violence there could be

discrimination there could be

any any norm any number of things that

could be bad

so just for self-defense i'll be voting

for trump

there you go all right um

what does he get in return what does

bloomberg get in return

yeah it's a good question isn't it

somebody says kimberly's son was from a

prior managed

marriage you mean before gavin newsom

we'll do a fact check on that because i

might be wrong about her

her son but there's still there's still

a

connection with gavin newsom even if

it's indirect

all right the slaughter meter is the

slaughter meter is at about 200 percent

at the moment

um almost every day that goes by

it looks better for trump and worse for

biden

and i until that changes

this slaughter meter said about 200 all

right that's all i got for now

and i will talk to you later