Episode 1393 Scott Adams - Public Revolt Against Mask Mandates, Biden China Policy, Flynn Controversy
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: ----------- - Valid medical usage of psychedelics - OSHA mask mandate conflicts with CDC - Race relations under Biden - Michael Flynn on military coup - Biden's racist reparations plan - Biden's conflict of interest problem, China ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
Hey everybody. Yes, it's time again for the best time of the whole day. We call it Coffee with Scott Adams, and I think you'd like to enjoy it to the max. Some of you are thinking, oh no, I don't need it, I'll be fine without the simultaneous sip. Will you? Will you really? Well, I wouldn't want to…
View segment →y, it's your life. It's a free country. But for the rest of you who would like to maximize your experience connecting with people all over the world simultaneously, all you need is a cup or an Ember glass or a tanker, a Yeti style, in a canteen, jug or flask. A vessel of any kind. And happy birthda…
View segment →'ve caught one of these live, congratulations. You are on it, and I think that should be commended. Well, there's some new research into LSD, and the research says there's a hypothesis that suggests that psychedelics will unwind the influence one's prior beliefs have on the brain, allowing thoughts…
View segment →golden age coming, this is one of the biggest parts. The fact that psychedelics, mushrooms in particular I think, are becoming — they're moving solidly into the mainstream. No doubt about it. And that happens, of course, because there's a certain age of people, and when they get in power, suddenly t…
View segment →greatest things that's happened to civilization. It could be that big. And that's not an exaggeration, by the way. Anybody who's experienced psychedelics, I think 80 percent of you would agree with that statement, that it's going to transform civilization. It won't just be a thing that's happening.…
View segment →of the show, right? And people are paying you a lot of money to put on a show. You can't just skip an important part of it. But she decided to pull out of the French Open entirely, and she said she didn't want to do these interviews to protect her mental health. What the hell does that mean? I mean…
View segment →necessary. So that's the same direction we're going. You know, there'll be lots of edge questions about cruise ships. You know, there'll be special cases where people are genuinely in close contact and maybe it's not quite ready yet. You could argue that. But for all the easy stuff such as the work…
View segment →t ever believe that the government's in charge. You know, they're in charge in an emergency. They're in charge in some specific situations. But they're not in charge. The public is always in charge. They just have to choose to use their authority or not. That's the only decision. It may be that if…
View segment →ow who you are anymore. We have to figure out who we are. I was reading an article that a lot of relationships maybe stayed together during the pandemic but will probably be ripped apart as soon as your requirements for what you need to do and not do change. So I would expect massive divorce, massiv…
View segment →fts we've ever had to have. And I've got to tell you, I'm already feeling it. Yesterday, for example, I was insanely bored. Like really, really bored. And I thought to myself, well, I'm bored, but realistically where I live I can kind of do most things, right? I can now go to a restaurant, don't eve…
View segment →e Washington Post let somebody who's on the board of directors of a military drone company — they make military drones — writes an opinion piece in the Washington Post saying that to avoid wider war, Iran must be deterred with limited U.S. military strikes. Do you know how you do a limited U.S. mil…
View segment →ne maker, saying we should do some more war that just happens to use some drones he might own some stock in that company. What do you think? Do you think somebody on the board of directors owns some stock in the company? Yeah, yeah. And did the Washington Post say, beware of this opinion because it…
View segment →ve as this? Nobody. Nobody else. Nope. Michael Flynn was a victim of our government. He was a victim of our government like a big victim, a big conspicuous victim of the government. He wasn't a victim of a crime. He wasn't a victim of bad luck. He wasn't a victim of natural disasters. He was a victi…
View segment →e wealth gap. Does anybody have a problem with poor people doing better? No. It's just how you do it, right? It's the mechanism to make that happen that's the controversy. And so Joe Biden is going to use government funding to directly benefit Black businesses, and there are a number of other thing…
View segment →racism in any direction because that's not the country I want to live in. And indeed I would move out of the country if this becomes more of a norm than it is. It's already pretty bad. Now I'm speaking as somebody who's lost a couple of jobs. Some of you know my story. I've written about it a lot.…
View segment →transgender thing, which I don't know if I ever said it clearly, is people are not broken. The system of how we organize and do sports is completely broken. And if you think that the problem is with the people, I don't think that's a good way to organize society. I think we should always say, okay…
View segment →s tragic decisions. But I don't think I should be making that decision for some other family. I just think it's a mistake and unambiguously a mistake. If those kids want to make those decisions later in life, that's different. All right. Forget that one. You know, I can't get over this fact that t…
View segment →ou can find a credible study that tracks happiness over time in the United States by ethnicity so that if you could tell, for example, let's say Asian Americans, their happiness line went like this versus white Americans versus Black Americans. You could actually see over time how their arc of their…
View segment →Hey everybody. Yes, it's time again for the best time of the whole day. We call it Coffee with Scott Adams, and I think you'd like to enjoy it to the max. Some of you are thinking, oh no, I don't need it, I'll be fine without the simultaneous sip. Will you? Will you really? Well, I wouldn't want to try it if I were you, but hey, it's your life. It's a free country.
But for the rest of you who would like to maximize your experience connecting with people all over the world simultaneously, all you need is a cup or an Ember glass or a tanker, a Yeti style, in a canteen, jug or flask. A vessel of any kind. And happy birthday.
Also it's time for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better. That's right, it's the simultaneous sip. But first, go get your beverage. And if this is the first time you've caught one of these live, congratulations. You are on it, and I think that should be commended.
Well, there's some new research into LSD, and the research says there's a hypothesis that suggests that psychedelics will unwind the influence one's prior beliefs have on the brain, allowing thoughts to flow more freely, unimpeded by past assumptions. There were two ways to discover this to be true. One way was to do science and research it. The other way is to do a psychedelic, because you know who could have told you the answer to this research question? Everybody who took a psychedelic.
Everybody who took a psychedelic will tell you that their previous assumptions and the frame that they had for reality just gets blown up. And that's the weird thing. The big thing that you take away is that you can view the world completely differently. And here's the important part: you can view the world completely differently and it still works. That's the thing that you'll never forget. Because if you see the world looking differently and it all doesn't work, more like a dream — you know, if you have a dream, things don't sort of make sense. That doesn't work. So that would be a dream, would be a view of the world that's just random and, you know, it's not built to work.
But you could be tripping your balls off and still order an Uber and go to the beach, right? It still works. Reality still works even when it's completely different. And once you realize the subjective nature of reality, then a lot of those things you thought were problems that were going to end you, such as even depression, even neuroticism or anxiety — I think more so. There's lots of evidence to show that psychedelics could just wipe out a whole number of mental problems that are more acquired problems as opposed to organic. I think that would be the difference, but I'm not positive about that.
When I talk about the golden age coming, this is one of the biggest parts. The fact that psychedelics, mushrooms in particular I think, are becoming — they're moving solidly into the mainstream. No doubt about it. And that happens, of course, because there's a certain age of people, and when they get in power, suddenly their people have done psychedelics and suddenly it doesn't seem too bad to them now that they're in power.
So I think maybe the next one to three years, something gigantic is going to happen with psychedelics. And it won't just change how you feel about stuff. It will change the world, because how you feel about stuff depends on how you act, and how you act changes the world. So there's something really, really big coming in this domain, and I don't know exactly how it's going to turn out, but I think mostly positive. And maybe not even mostly. It could be something like one of the greatest things that's happened to civilization. It could be that big. And that's not an exaggeration, by the way.
Anybody who's experienced psychedelics, I think 80 percent of you would agree with that statement, that it's going to transform civilization. It won't just be a thing that's happening.
Cernovich says in the comments — Mike Cernovich says that calling it plant medicine is a better frame. Maybe. Yeah, it might go down better with the public.
There's a story about Naomi Osaka, one of the best female tennis players in the world, just pulled out of the French Open. She was getting a lot of heat because she was refusing to do media interviews, which of course is an essential part of the job of being a top athlete. You don't really get to not do the interview because that's part of the show, right? And people are paying you a lot of money to put on a show. You can't just skip an important part of it.
But she decided to pull out of the French Open entirely, and she said she didn't want to do these interviews to protect her mental health. What the hell does that mean? I mean, it's probably important. I'm not going to minimize it, because when somebody says they need to do something for their mental health, I feel as if we should — our first impression should be to believe them, right? Because the last thing you want to do is to minimize somebody's mental health issues. So I believe there's a real issue.
But it's confusing because this is somebody who can handle playing at the highest level of a sport in front of a stadium full of people, televised to the world, and somehow she pulls that off. So I'm not sure how talking to the media would give you a mental health problem. So there's something missing in the story. What is the connection between the media and mental health? But it's interesting. Let's maybe we'll find out more about that.
I don't want to dump on her. It would be easy to do that, but I feel like we don't know enough about this. And when somebody makes a claim that's a health-related claim, I think you give them the benefit of the doubt first.
Well, something interesting happening in Israel. Apparently Israel had been considering some kind of a green pass system so that if you were vaccinated you could do things, but if you weren't vaccinated you couldn't. But apparently Israel has done so well at vaccinating so many of their citizens that they're going to drop plans for it.
So remember I told you not to worry about vaccination passports, because if they happened they would be temporary. And this is a perfect example. Not only in Israel does it look like they'll be less than temporary, they will be strongly considered and then not even used, because vaccinations made them unnecessary. So that's the same direction we're going.
You know, there'll be lots of edge questions about cruise ships. You know, there'll be special cases where people are genuinely in close contact and maybe it's not quite ready yet. You could argue that. But for all the easy stuff such as the workplace, you're not going to need any kind of a pass.
Speaking of mask mandates at work, it looks like the Occupational Safety and Health Organization — so this is a U.S. group called OSHA — they may still issue a workplace mask mandate consistent with Biden's executive orders. But that would be at odds with the CDC's guidelines that vaccinated people don't need to wear masks indoors.
So you're an American citizen and you know that the CDC says you don't need the masks indoors if you're vaccinated, but OSHA, who's also looking out for your safety in the workplace, might say that you do. So I think this is undetermined yet, but they might say that you do.
Here's my take on this, and I've told you before: the public is in charge. All right? If you think the government's in charge with this mask mandate stuff, there's something about the world that you don't understand. The government's not in charge. The people will decide when they're done with masks and where, and they'll decide by just doing it. Because if enough people do it, it's unarrestable, right? There's no recourse. It's just how many people do it.
If one person violates a rule, well, they're in trouble. Two people, probably in trouble. Three people, they're in trouble. Four people, they're probably in trouble. A thousand people, nobody's in trouble. Yeah. If a thousand people decide, well, today's the day, no mask — and I think that in the workplace specifically, the workplace, I can't imagine any workplace that I've been in where we wouldn't walk into the workplace and say, hey everybody, let's have a meeting. OSHA says this, CDC says this, what do you say? And the meeting would say if you're vaccinated, take your mask off. And that would be it.
And that office, at least that floor of that office, would be mask-free. And then other people would hear about that floor and they'd say, did you get away with it so far? No penalty. And then they would do it too. So the next 30 days, the public will completely take control of this issue again. Not counting stuff like cruise ships, right? There will be special cases, and I don't think the public is quite qualified for those. But when you talk about something like the workplace and the CDC has already weighed in about the risks, I do think the public is qualified to make a decision about their risk-reward, and the public will make that decision.
So don't ever believe that the government's in charge. You know, they're in charge in an emergency. They're in charge in some specific situations. But they're not in charge. The public is always in charge. They just have to choose to use their authority or not. That's the only decision.
It may be that if OSHA gets away with this, you'll see more remote work, and maybe that's good. You know, there's an argument to be made that the best thing that could happen is for OSHA to require masks at work in the workplace, and that will cause people to say, okay, I'm not going to work, I'll just work from home. And if it's a little bit more pressure on making that happen, maybe that would be good. I don't want to see masks in the workplace if you're vaccinated, but you know, anything could happen.
I've got a warning for you, and maybe you're already aware of this. This is a big, big warning, and I don't know if there'll be anything more important than this that'll happen in the next several months, you know, short of a war breaking out. And it goes like this: the end of the pandemic is going to cause a mental health crisis bigger than the pandemic itself.
Now, how many of you know why that is? In the comments, see. Let's see if you can tell me why. So this is the statement: we do know that the pandemic almost certainly has caused more mental health problems. Definitely, wouldn't you say? My prediction is that the end of it — you know, the period where you're transitioning from pandemic to non-pandemic — will be way worse for mental health. Like way worse. Like by a factor of three. Something like that. Won't even be close.
And let me tell you why. You're not used to seeing people. You're also not used to your old routine. You don't know who you are anymore. We have to figure out who we are. I was reading an article that a lot of relationships maybe stayed together during the pandemic but will probably be ripped apart as soon as your requirements for what you need to do and not do change. So I would expect massive divorce, massive mental illness, and probably violence that comes with it.
And I've noted, by the way, that mental health is usually the worst in June. Now, in a normal year, mental health is definitely the worst in June in my observed opinion. I don't know if there's any science to it, but observationally, when kids get out of school in June, at least in the United States, all of your routines change and you just flip out. Like the family can't figure out who's doing what when, and the stress goes through the roof, and easy things become hard things.
And so anytime you have a massive civilization change of schedule, people flip out. So the end of the pandemic is going to be one of the biggest mental shifts we've ever had to have. And I've got to tell you, I'm already feeling it. Yesterday, for example, I was insanely bored. Like really, really bored. And I thought to myself, well, I'm bored, but realistically where I live I can kind of do most things, right? I can now go to a restaurant, don't even need my mask. I can ride a bike. I can even join my gym again. I'd need a mask in the gym, but I can join the gym again. I can go to the gym. So I can do almost anything. I can travel.
And I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. So in other words, freedom caused a mental illness. And I think that that's actually normal. As soon as you get more freedom and you can't just follow your routine, you're going to flip out. Now, not all of you. Some of you will just be much happier and that's the end of the story. Everybody's different, right?
But it's a warning. If everything I know about the human mind and the way we think is true — and I'm pretty confident it is — there's going to be a massive mental health problem over the summer and probably lasting into the fall. But be ready for that. And when it happens to you, you'll expect it. Maybe you can handle it better.
Rasmussen has an interesting poll today about race relations, asking the question: are race relations better in the United States since the election of Joe Biden? And what do you think people said? Are race relations better or worse under Biden? What do you think?
Well, the answer is 28 percent said it's better, but more people, 39 percent, said it's worse. As you might imagine, more conservatives said it's worse than liberals. So people basically support their team. But so conservatives said it — only 12 percent said it's better — but liberals said 54 percent is better.
Then the follow-up question: has life for Black Americans gotten better or worse since Biden was elected? 22 percent said it's gotten better. 29 percent said it got worse.
So how do you explain that? Biden gets into office, presumably according to a lot of people on the left, replacing the worst person who ever lived, Donald Trump, a racist they say. So if you get rid of Trump and you bring in Biden, you know, Obama's ex-vice president, he's got a bunch of plans now for a whole bunch of racist policies — I'll talk about in a minute — but they're racist in a way that would help Black Americans. And yet they feel it's getting worse. What's going on?
It's the news, right? The news makes us think things are getting worse no matter what is actually happening, because the news needs you to think that race relations are getting worse. It's just the news. Do you think race relations are getting worse? Well, yes, because of the news. So the news has this ability to make things worse and then assign the blame to other people, which is the world we live in.
Speaking of messed up things, Twitter user Alan McLeod points out that the Washington Post let somebody who's on the board of directors of a military drone company — they make military drones — writes an opinion piece in the Washington Post saying that to avoid wider war, Iran must be deterred with limited U.S. military strikes.
Do you know how you do a limited U.S. military strike? What would make it limited? What kind of military assets would you likely employ if you wanted your military action to be limited? Could it be drones? Maybe drones, yeah. So the Washington Post runs an opinion piece from a drone maker guy, a guy who's on the board of directors of a drone maker, saying we should do some more war that just happens to use some drones he might own some stock in that company.
What do you think? Do you think somebody on the board of directors owns some stock in the company? Yeah, yeah. And did the Washington Post say, beware of this opinion because it's coming from somebody who would make a lot of money if you bought into this opinion? I don't believe they did. I think that Alan happened to look into the person who wrote the article and made that discovery, or somebody did. So how about that for your news business?
Michael Flynn raised some eyebrows. Was it yesterday? He made the comments at some event in Dallas which is reported to be a, you know, QAnon conspiracy event. I don't know if it was. But Flynn was asked this question on stage. Somebody said, I want to know what happened. I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here, meaning a military coup.
And so this is a member of the audience asked Michael Flynn when Flynn was on stage. Here was Flynn's answer: no reason. I mean it should happen here. No reason. That's right. What? Wait, did Michael Flynn just say that there should be a military coup in the United States? Now that's how the news is handling it. Is that what he said?
Now this is all we know, and as far as I know this is not a Rupar video, meaning I don't think it's selectively edited. It looks like he actually said that. If I'm wrong about that, as selectively edited, somebody let me know in the comments, but I don't think it was. So what do you make of that? A military person from this country, retired but a general who had lots of access at the highest levels of intel at least at one point, and he says that there's no reason we shouldn't go the way of Myanmar. I can't pronounce it. Should happen here.
What do you make of that? All right, here's what I make of it. First of all, I don't think too many people are taking this seriously, and I'm not worried that this will form some kind of violent revolution. But if you were to take, let's say, all of the 370 million people in America, whatever the number is, if you round up all the Americans that there are, and then I ask you this question: out of all the Americans, is there one — is there one American who has a right to call for a violent revolution in the United States? And of all of them and of all the Americans, who's the one person you say to yourself, okay, if he said it, all right, I can get that. Michael Flynn.
Now I'm not going to say that he said something that was good or smart or beneficial to the country, so I'm not going to back him in his opinion. I rebuke his opinion. We do not need violence in this country. We certainly don't need a violent revolution. But this is just me, and I don't ask you to do the same thing. All right? This is just me. You make your own decisions.
Michael Flynn gets a pass. Do you know who else I would give a pass? Out of all the people in the country, do you know who else would get a pass for saying something as provocative as this? Nobody. Nobody else. Nope. Michael Flynn was a victim of our government. He was a victim of our government like a big victim, a big conspicuous victim of the government. He wasn't a victim of a crime. He wasn't a victim of bad luck. He wasn't a victim of natural disasters. He was a victim targeted specifically by the government of the United States.
If Michael Flynn says they should all be shot, I would disagree with that vigorously, and I would support his right to say it. I support his right to say it. He earned it, right? If there's one person in the country who can say that without me bothering to, you know, make a deal about it, it's him. He's the only one. You know, maybe I could think of somebody else, but if your government targets you for destruction for political purposes and you call for a violent overthrow of that government, you're within your rights. You're within the rights of free speech, and you're not crazy. You're not crazy, and you've got a perfectly good case.
My preference is we don't do that, right? So I'm not promoting it. I'm not apologizing for it. I'm not supporting anything he said. I disavow completely. But I give him a pass at the same time. He's the only one who can say that.
All right. So CNN has described the blocking by the Republicans of the so-called January 6 commission to look into it. So CNN is calling the blocking of that commission a gut punch to democracy. So I did a little poll and I asked what is a bigger gut punch to democracy, the blocking of the January 6 commission or CNN? Which is the bigger gut punch to democracy?
The results the last I looked were 5 percent of respondents said that blocking the January 6 commission is a gut punch to democracy, and 95 percent say CNN is a gut punch to democracy. And if you think I like saying "gut punch to democracy," well you're right, I do like saying it.
Looks like Joe Biden has introduced a number of overt racist policies to quote "close the racial wealth gap." You racist. You piece of — you've taken the best part about this country and you just pissed on it, you piece of — Joe Biden, you racist piece of — all right, that's my opinion. Now let's talk about it.
As you know, I have been in favor of a creative approach to reparations. So out of all the people watching this, I might be in the very small percentage of people who say, you know, we should look at this reparations thing. At least, you know, suss out all the possibilities, see what we could do, what works, what's politically and socially acceptable, that might make a difference, etc.
I've argued that you can't get there unless you help all poor people, but helping all poor people with an express interest in making sure that we also close the wealth gap, I'm fine with that. Let's close the wealth gap. Does anybody have a problem with poor people doing better? No. It's just how you do it, right? It's the mechanism to make that happen that's the controversy.
And so Joe Biden is going to use government funding to directly benefit Black businesses, and there are a number of other things he's looking into, but they all have the same element. That instead of saying we're going to close the income gap, which a lot of people would say is a good idea as long as you're not just taking it from the rich and transferring it, then it's a different issue. But if you could make poor people richer, I feel like everybody likes that if you can figure out how to do it.
But so Biden has figured out how to do reparations. So instead of asking people to write a check to individual Black Americans who were descended from slavery, which would be almost impossible to figure out how to do it, how much, who pays, who doesn't pay, who gets it, who doesn't get it, that would be impossible. But Biden actually found a workaround.
So let me start by saying good job. You know, the most annoying thing that I'll ever do is compliment people's effectiveness even if I hate what they're doing. All right, now I did it. I did it consistently with Trump. I would talk about his technique separate from whether I liked it or not, right? Or whether I like the policy or not. That's a separate question.
And I'm going to say that Joe Biden was in a tough spot because people wanted reparations, but he really couldn't do that. There wasn't any way he could just figure out a way for the government to cut checks and just give them to Black Americans. That wasn't going to happen. But he found a workaround. He will increase our taxes and or increase our debt and funnel a lot of that money — most of it comes from rich people because that's who pays taxes mostly — and you'll give it to Black businesses specifically and other things that are targeted for Black Americans.
Now that of course is just pure racism. And it's pure racism. So I don't support racism in any direction because that's not the country I want to live in. And indeed I would move out of the country if this becomes more of a norm than it is. It's already pretty bad.
Now I'm speaking as somebody who's lost a couple of jobs. Some of you know my story. I've written about it a lot. Because I'm white. Specifically because I'm white and male. In other words, my bosses told me directly we can't promote you because you're white and male, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. Two different jobs. Which is why I'm a cartoonist. I had to go work for myself because having a boss didn't work. Maybe you've seen a cartoon about that. Bosses that are not good for you.
So I hate Joe Biden. He's a racist and he's introducing racist policies and he should be completely disavowed. But if I'm looking at the quality of his technique, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. If he pulls this off, I think he's got a good argument that he helped Black Americans and they might reward him or the Democrats in elections. So politically it's probably pretty good. He's just a racist.
All right. Biden has a China problem. I think Liz Peek was writing about this on Fox News website. And the problem goes like this. We have all these things we need to negotiate with China. But here's my question. Do you personally know how much China knows about Hunter Biden? Do you? I mean, you know what the news has reported that Hunter Biden did or allegedly did or did not, right?
Michael says if they could do it to Michael Flynn they can do it to anybody and get away with it. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But Biden has a problem, which is you've probably heard this standard before, that if somebody has a conflict of interest they should call it out. And yeah, that's this good point. Joe Biden was responsible for the destruction of General Flynn by calling out the Logan Act. And Biden's the government. If you were Michael Flynn and the very guy who was like at the center of your targeting was running the government, would you be in favor of a violent overthrow of the government? Maybe. Maybe you would be. Yeah.
All right. So anyway, Biden has a China problem, which is you've heard the saying that you should avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest, correct? Not only do I have something on my shirt. You should not only avoid actual conflict of interest but you want to avoid the appearance of it, because the effectiveness of our government is partly if not largely based on their credibility.
If the government is doing good things or at least trying to do good things, you'll say all right, you know, you can still be in charge. But what if you don't know if Joe Biden's decisions are based on maybe concern about what China knows about his son? Do you know? You don't know what China knows, do you? You don't know what Joe Biden knows about Hunter. You don't know what Hunter knows about himself. You don't know.
So how can Joe Biden be our credible leader against the number one important topic to this country, which is the future of the United States vis-a-vis China? It's one of our biggest questions, if not the biggest question. It's probably the biggest question. And our leader is the only person I know of — there must be more, but the only one I know of — who I can't trust right now.
I'm not saying I can't trust him because he's a Democrat and I'm not saying I can't trust him because he's Joe Biden. I actually do think a Democrat and a Joe Biden without any conflict would be perfectly capable of dealing with China. But somebody whose son might be a risk? I don't think so. I don't think we can trust Biden on any China question.
So what do you do about that? Well, I almost think that Biden should recuse himself, except if he did it would sort of indicate that Biden's guilty. So he can't even recuse himself. Now how would a president recuse himself? Because there's nobody to take the president's job, right? Like who steps in? And the only way I can imagine would be to set up some kind of a commission of people who are not Joe Biden, and they could be just Democrats because they would report to him. And have that commission come up with recommendations, and the commission would not have a bias. And then you would see if Biden uses what they come up with. But you'd be concerned that they would be co-opted to do whatever Biden wanted. So maybe that wouldn't work either.
Ken Davis says this marks five episodes where you haven't made me mad. Try harder. Well, Ken, I think transgender athletes should have every right to compete anywhere they want. Actually I don't believe that. What I do believe is that all athletes should be competing against people who are of similar capabilities. I don't think that their genders should matter. So I don't think that we should be having men's teams and women's teams only. I think we should also have co-ed teams, and then people can just play with whatever level that they're capable to play with.
So I don't believe that we should keep the teams the way they are with just women and just men and then throw some transgender athletes into the mix and hope it works out, because it won't. Obviously it won't. So my point on the transgender thing, which I don't know if I ever said it clearly, is people are not broken. The system of how we organize and do sports is completely broken. And if you think that the problem is with the people, I don't think that's a good way to organize society.
I think we should always say, okay people, you're all really different, but none of you are broken. For our purposes you're all just different. We're not going to judge you. You're just different. And if you have a system that can't handle the differences among people without breaking, well your system's broken. It's not a problem with the people. People are fine. We're all different. All right, get over it. Make a system that works when you know people are all different. If you can't make that system, don't complain about the people.
And it would be easy to make that system. I've been in such a system. I've been on co-ed teams in which the gender didn't matter at all. It only mattered if you could play at the level of the other players. That's all. Didn't matter anything else.
And I'm saying in the comments the issue of transgender on minors, I don't approve of transgender surgery on minors. Let me say that clearly. I don't approve of that. Unfortunately it's also not my decision, because I do approve of the parents being able to control the fate of their family. And that's not always going to be good, right? Sometimes they're going to make bad decisions, sometimes tragic decisions. But I don't think I should be making that decision for some other family. I just think it's a mistake and unambiguously a mistake. If those kids want to make those decisions later in life, that's different.
All right. Forget that one.
You know, I can't get over this fact that the survey showed that people who are very liberal, especially the white women, have way more mental illness than other people. And here's a question I don't really know has been answered. Scott's silly argument. Well, I will hide you so you disappeared. You can tell me what's wrong with my arguments. That's always acceptable. But if you write in all caps "Scott's silly argument," then I got to deal with you. I got to take care of that.
All right. So what do you think? Do you think having a mental disorder makes you more likely to say you're very liberal, or does being very liberal cause a mental illness? Which one causes the other? Or is there any causation? Maybe it's just a correlation that has nothing to do with any causation. What do you think?
Because I feel like it might be both. It might be that having a mental illness causes you to be very liberal, because there's a lot you have to accept that doesn't quite fit the rational model. But it could also be that buying into a certain set of fears and a certain frame of how the world works and whether you're a victim or not could cause you mental illness. Yeah, I think it's bidirectional like a lot of things are.
In fact, if you had a new situation and you said oh there's some cause and there's some effect and you don't know anything about anything, your best guess is that it's bidirectional because a lot of things are.
All right. So here are some taboo topics we can't talk too much about. Whether your phone causes mental illness, because nobody wants to get rid of their phone and the companies that make them make a lot of money and we just don't want to talk about that too much even though we know it's a giant problem.
We don't want to talk about whether fake news causes mental illness, because of course it does. Of course it does. And I would think that watching CNN would cause mental illness. Not a joke. Not a joke. It seems to me obvious that if you watch the CNN and MSNBC you would get mental illness. And I'm not joking about that. That's just dead serious. And it's not partisan. It's just observational.
I look at the things they say. Imagine for example you thought you really lived in a country in which the president had really said that neo-Nazis were very fine people. Now most of you watching this know that that didn't happen. It was a fake edit and that he said exactly the opposite strongly. But maybe three quarters of the country believe that actually happened.
Imagine if you thought that happened. I mean seriously, imagine if you believed that actually happened, that you were living in a country where the president praised white supremacists right on TV. How would that make you feel? Well I feel like I'd have some mental illness. I'd have a little bit of anxiety. I'd get a little bit depressed. I feel like we're doomed.
So yes, CNN causes mental illness. There's no doubt in my mind. I mean obviously you have to wait for a scientific, well-controlled study to know for sure, but do you really need to wait for the study? Sometimes things are a little too obvious. You don't have to wait for the study. But I could be wrong. I always keep that. I always try to keep that recording going, by the way.
This is a trick that I teach you in my book Loserthink that is good to, when you have a strong opinion about something, especially if you're really certain, when you sometimes when you state your opinion with certainty just cap it off with "but I could be wrong." It's just a good hygiene for your brain. You should always remind yourself, especially when you're certain, but I could be wrong. It gives you a little mental out.
Because I don't know this for sure but I think it gives you a little protection against cognitive dissonance. Compare these two things: I'm definitely right versus I'm very confident about this but you know I could be wrong. And then what happens if you find out you are wrong? Well the person who says I'm definitely right will be triggered into cognitive dissonance because they don't want to be wrong. That's what causes cognitive dissonance.
So saying you're positive and sticking with it is a trap, because if it turns out you're wrong or there's counter evidence you won't be able to see it. It'll be like it'll be invisible to you. It's like causing yourself mental illness. You blind yourself by being certain. But if you just add this little bit of technique, you say I'm quite confident this is true but I could be wrong, that's your escape. Because let's say you discover that you are wrong. Now you've said I'm very confident but I could be wrong. Are you triggered into cognitive dissonance? Maybe. But I always think you're a little bit safer because you have two opinions. One is I'm confident and two is that I could be wrong. And then when it turns out you're wrong you say well I told you I could be wrong. See, at least you have an out. You have an out that protects your ego, which in theory should protect you from being triggered into cognitive dissonance. But if you've never given yourself that out, I think you're more likely to get triggered into cognitive dissonance.
All right. Here's a story you'll never see. See if you can Google because I couldn't find it. See if you can find a credible study that tracks happiness over time in the United States by ethnicity so that if you could tell, for example, let's say Asian Americans, their happiness line went like this versus white Americans versus Black Americans. You could actually see over time how their arc of their happiness changed. Why doesn't that exist? Seems like just the most important thing you'd ever want to do, doesn't it? Why doesn't that exist?
You know why, right? Now science tells us that baseline happiness doesn't change much and it doesn't even change much based on your circumstances, at least until you get a certain amount of money, right? Like 75,000 a year or something like that. So certainly you can be in such a bad situation that you're unhappy no matter what. But for people who are eating, you know, they can take care of their basics, happiness is pretty similar I think.
So what would happen to the call for reparations if you found out that Black Americans were on average just as happy as white Americans? What problem are you solving, right? It becomes complicated because if you're trying to problem-solve the problem of giving everybody an equal life or at least equal opportunity for a good life, what happens if they're all equally happy already? If everybody's just as happy, don't need to do anything. Or at least you don't need to transfer resources.
But I think there's a reason that we'll never see that study unless you can find it. If you can find it, tweet it at me.
And then lastly I would say that we should stop calling the question of nuclear energy a debate, because I don't believe there are any smart, well-informed people who are opposed to nuclear energy. I don't believe there are any on the right and I don't believe there are any on the left. I don't believe anybody who is well-informed about nuclear energy opposes it in 2021.
Now of course you can find an exception. Watch me use the technique again. But of course I could be wrong. There could be some people who are well-informed and against it, but there'd be very few. So you don't need to show me the one person who's against it, right?
Science as a body is pro-nuclear energy unambiguously. If you're pro-science but you're anti-nuclear energy, well you have some explaining to do because that doesn't make sense. All right, take a side and stick with it. I'm pro-science and so I'm pro-nuclear energy. And anybody who's well-informed knows the same. And maybe we should just treat it that way because there's some things we treat as a difference in opinion and it really isn't. It's just a difference in knowledge.
And so I would like to see polling separated by what demographic groups have more mental illness and by let's say how well-informed people are on a topic. Wouldn't you like to see a poll that only showed what the opinion of well-informed people think, right? How hard would it be? Answer these six questions about nuclear power. If you get all six right, you're a well-informed person. And now let's see what your opinion is. And now let's weight it so that the smart people get more weight on their opinion and then show me the result. That's what I want to see.
Why do I want to see a poll that averages well-informed people's opinions with furniture, pets, and imaginary people, right? I don't need an average of crap. I'd love to see an average of well-informed people. Wouldn't you? It'd be interesting to see an average of uninformed people just to see how different they are. But I don't want to add the well-informed people to the uninformed people and get an average. What the hell is that? It's nothing. All right, it's nothing.
Now there are lots of topics like should you stand for the flag, whatever, that everybody is just as well-informed, right? There's no lack of information that matters. But on nuclear energy it's just how informed you are. That's all that matters to your opinion almost, right?
All right, I gotta go run and do something else right now and I will talk to you tomorrow.
hey everybody yes it's time again for the best time of the whole day we call it coffee with scott adams and i think you'd like to enjoy it to the max some of you are thinking oh no i don't need it i'll be fine without the simultaneous sip will you will you really well i wouldn't want to try it if i were you but hey it's your life it's a free country but for the rest of you who would like to maximize your experience connecting with people all over the world simultaneously all you need is a copper ember glass of tanker jealousy style in a canteen jugger flask a vessel of any kind and happy birthday also it's time for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine of the day the thing that makes everything better that's right it's a simultaneous set but it's coming after you right now go and if this is the first time you've caught one of these live congratulations you are on it and i think that should be commended well there's some new research into lsd and the research says there's a hypothesis that suggests that psychedelics will unwind the influence one's prior beliefs have on the brain allowing thoughts to flow more freely unimpeded by past assumptions there were two ways to discover this to be true one way was to do science and research it the other way is to do a psychedelic because you know who could have told you the answer of this research question everybody who took a psychedelic everybody who took a psychedelic will tell you that their previous assumptions and the frame that they add for reality just gets blown up and that's the weird thing the the big the big thing that you take away is that you can view the world completely differently and here's the important part you can view the world completely differently and it still works that's the thing you that you'll never forget because if you see the world looking differently and it all doesn't work more like a dream you know if you have a dream things don't sort of make sense that it doesn't work so that would be a dream would be a view of the world that's just random and you know it's not built to work but you could be tripping your balls off and still order an uber and go to the beach right it still works reality still works even when it's completely different and once you realize the subjective nature of reality then a lot of those things you thought were problems that were gonna end you such as even depression even neuroticism there or anxiety i think more so the there's lots of evidence to show that psychedelics could just wipe out um a whole number of mental problems that are more acquired problems as opposed to organic i think i think that would be the difference but i'm not positive about that when i talk about the golden age coming this is one of the biggest parts the the fact that psychedelics mushrooms in particular i think uh are becoming they're they're moving solidly into the mainstream no doubt about it and that happens of course because there's a certain age of people and when they get in power suddenly their people have done psychedelics and suddenly it doesn't seem too bad to them now that they're in power so i think i think maybe the next one to three years something gigantic is going to happen with psychedelics and it won't just change how you feel about stuff it will change the world because how you feel about stuff depends how you act and how you act changes the world so there's something really really big coming in this domain and i don't know exactly how it's going to turn out but i think mostly positive and maybe not even mostly it could be something like one of the greatest things that's happened to civilization it could be that big and that's not an exaggeration by the way anybody who's experienced psychedelics i think 80 percent of you would agree with that statement that it's it's going to transform civilization it won't just be a thing that's happening um cernovich says i'm saying in the comments mike's image says that calling it plant medicine is a better frame maybe yeah it might go down better with the public uh there's a story about naomi osaka one of the best female tennis players in the world just pulled out of the french open she was getting a lot of heat because she was refusing to do media interviews which of course is an essential part of the job of being a top athlete you don't really get to not do the interview because that's part of the show right and people are paying you a lot of money to put on a show you can't just skip an important part of it but she decided to pull out of the french open entirely and she said she didn't want to do these interviews to protect her mental health what the hell does that mean i mean it's probably important i'm not going to minimize it because when somebody says they need to do something for their mental health i feel as if we should you know our first impression should be to believe them right because the last thing you want to do is to minimize somebody's mental health issues so i believe there's a real issue but it's confusing because this is somebody who can handle playing at the highest level of a sport in front of a stadium full of people televised to the world and somehow she pulls that off so i'm not sure how talking to the media would give you a mental health problem so there's something missing in the story what is what is the connection between the media and mental health but it's interesting let's maybe we'll find out more about that i don't want to dump on her it would be easy to do that but i feel like we don't know enough about this and when somebody makes a claim that's a health related claim i think you give them the benefit of doubt first well something interesting happening in israel uh apparently israel had been considering some kind of a green pass system so that if you were vaccinated you could do things but if you weren't vaccinated you couldn't but apparently israel has done so well at vaccinating so many of their citizens that they're going to drop plans for it so remember i told you not to worry about vaccination passports because if they happened they would be temporary and this is a a perfect example not only in israel does it look like they uh they'll be less than temporary they will be strongly considered and then not even used because vaccinations made them unnecessary so that's the same direction we're going you know there'll be lots of edge questions about cruise ships you know there'll be special cases where people are genuinely in close contact and maybe it's not quite ready yet you know you could argue that but for all the easy stuff such as the workplace you're not going to need any kind of a pass um speaking of mask mandates at work it looks like the the occupational safety and health organization so this is a u.s group called osha they may still issue a workplace mask mandate consistent with biden's orders executive orders but that would be at odds with the cdc's guidelines the vaccinated people don't need to wear masks indoors so you're you're an american citizen and you know that the cdc says you don't need the masks indoors if you're vaccinated but osha who's also you know looking out for your safety in the workplace might say that you do so i think this is undetermined yet but they might say that you do here's my take on this and i've told you before um the public is in charge all right if you think the government's in charge with this masked mandate stuff there's something about the world that you don't understand the government's not in charge the people will decide when they're done with masks and where and they'll decide by just doing it because because if enough people do it it's unarrestable right it's there's no there's no recourse it's just how many people do it if one person violates a rule well they're in trouble two people probably in trouble three people they're in trouble four people they're probably in trouble a thousand people nobody's in trouble yeah if a thousand people decide well today's the day no mask and i think that in the workplace specifically the workplace i can't imagine any workplace that i've been in where we wouldn't walk into the workplace and say hey everybody let's have a meeting the osha says this cdc says this what do you say and the meeting would say if you're vaccinated take your mask off and that would be it and that office at least that floor of that office would be mask free and then other people would hear about that floor and they'd say did you get away with it so far no penalty and then they would do it too so the next 30 days the public will completely take control of this issue again not counting stuff like cruise ships right there will be special cases and i don't think the public is quite qualified for those but when you talk about something like the workplace and the cdc has already weighed in about the risks i do think the public is qualified to make a decision about their risk reward and the public will make that decision so don't don't ever believe that the government's in charge you know they're in charge in an emergency they're in charge in some specific situations but they're not in charge the public is always in charge they just have to choose to use their authority or not that's the only decision it may be that if ocean gets away with this you'll see more remote work and maybe that's good you know there's an argument to be made that the best thing that could happen is for osha to require masks at work in the workplace and that will cause people to say okay i'm not going to work i'll just work from home and if it's a little bit more pressure on making that happen maybe that would be good i don't want to see masks in the workplace if you're vaccinated but you know anything could happen i've got a warning for you and maybe you're already aware of this this is a big big warning and i don't know if there'll be anything more important than this that'll happen in the next several months you know short of a war breaking out and it goes like this the end of the pandemic is going to cause a mental health crisis bigger than the pandemic itself now how many of you know why that is in the comments see let's see if you can tell me why so this is the statement we do know that the pandemic almost certainly has caused more mental health problems definitely wouldn't you say my prediction is that the end of it you know the period where you're transitioning from pandemic to non-pandemic will be way worse for mental health like way worse like by a factor of three something like that won't even be close and let me tell you why you're not used to seeing people you're also not used to your old routine you don't know who you are anymore we have to figure out who we are i was reading an article that a lot of relationships maybe stay together during the pandemic but will probably be ripped apart as soon as your requirements for what you need to do and not do change so i would expect massive divorce massive mental illness and probably violence you know that comes with it and i've noted by the way that mental health is usually the worst in june now in a normal weir mental health is definitely the worst in june in my observed opinion i don't know if there's any science to it but observationally when kids get out of school in june at least in the united states your all of your routines change and you just flip out like the family can't figure out who's doing what when and the stress goes through the roof and easy things become hard things and so anytime you have a massive civilization change of schedule people flip out so the end of the pandemic is going to be one of the biggest mental shifts we've ever had to have and i've got to tell you i'm already feeling it yesterday for example i was insanely bored like really really bored and i thought to myself well i'm bored but realistically where i live i can kind of do most things right i can now go to a restaurant don't even need my mask i can ride a bike i can even join my gym again i'd need a mask in the gym but i can join the gym again i can go to the gym so i can do almost anything i can travel and i didn't like it i didn't like it at all so in other words freedom caused a mental illness and i think that that's actually normal as soon as you get more freedom and you can't just follow your routine you're gonna flip out now not all of you some of you will just be much happier and that's the end of the story everybody's different right but it's a warning if everything i know about the human mind and the way we think is true and i'm pretty confident it is there's going to be a massive mental health problem over the summer and probably lasting into the fall but be ready for that and when it happens to you you'll you'll expect it maybe you can handle it better rasmussen has a interesting poll today about race relations asking the question are race relations better in the united states since the election of joe biden and what do you think people said are race relations better or worse under biden what do you think well the answer is 28 said it's better but more people 39 said it's worse as you might imagine more conservatives said it's worse than liberals so people basically support their team but so conservatives said it only 12 percent said it's better but liberal said 54 is better then the follow-up question has life for black americans gotten better or worse since biden was elected 22 said it's gotten better 29 said it got worse so how do you explain that biden gets into office presumably according to a lot of people on the left replacing the worst person who ever lived donald trump a racist they say so if you get rid of trump and you bring in biden you know obama's ex-vice president he's got a bunch of plans now for a whole bunch of racist policies i'll talk about in a minute but they're racist in a way that would help black americans and yet they feel it's getting worse what's going on it's the news right the news makes us think things are getting worse no matter what is actually happening because the news needs to need you to think that race relations are getting worse it's just the news do you think race relations are getting worse well yes because of the news so the news has this ability to make things worse and then assign the blame to other people which is the world we live in speaking of messed up things uh twitter user alan mclaude mcleod i think mccloud points out that the washington post led somebody who's a on the board of directors of a military drone company they make military drones writes an opinion piece in the washington post saying that to avoid wider war iran must be deterred with limited us military strikes do you know how you do a limited us military strike what would make it hmm what kind of military assets would you likely employ if you wanted your military action to be limited could it be drones maybe drones yeah so the washington post runs an opinion piece from a drone maker guy a guy who's on the board of directors of a drone maker saying we should do some more war that just happens to you some drones he might own some stock in that company what do you think do you think somebody on the board of directors owns some stock in the company yeah yeah and did the washington post say uh beware of this opinion because it's coming from somebody who would make a lot of money if you bought into this opinion i don't believe they did i think that uh alan happened to look into the person who wrote the article and made that discovery or somebody did so how about that for your news business uh michael flynn raised some eyebrows uh was it yesterday he made the comments at some event in dallas which is reported to be a you know q anon conspiracy event i don't know if it was but flynn was asked this question on stage uh somebody said i want to know what happened uh i want to know why what happened in minamar myanmar can't happen here meaning a military coup and so this is a member of the audience asked michael flynn when flynn was on stage here was flynn's answer no reason i mean it should happen here no reason that's right what what wait did michael flynn just say that there should be a military coup in the united states now that's how the news is is handling it is that what he said now this is all we know and as far as i know this is not a rupaur video meaning i don't think it's selectively edited it looks like he actually said that if i'm wrong about that as selectively edited somebody let me know in the comments but i don't think it was so what do you make of that a military person from this country retired but a general who had lots of access at the highest levels of of intel at least at one point and he says that there's no reason we shouldn't go the way of myanmar i can't pronounce it should happen here what do you make of that all right here's what i make of it first of all i don't think too many people are taking this seriously and i don't i'm not worried that this will form some kind of violent revolution but if you were to take let's say all of the 370 million people in america whatever the number is if you round up all the americans that there are and then i ask you this question out of all the americans is there one is there one american who has a right to call for a violent revolution in the united states and of all of them and of all the americans who's the one person you say to yourself okay if he said it all right i can get that michael flynn now i'm not going to say that he said something that was good or smart or beneficial to the country so i'm not going to back him in his opinion i i rebuke his opinion we do not need violence in this country we certainly don't need a violent revolution but this is just me and i don't ask you to do the same thing all right this is just me you make your own decisions michael flynn gets a pass do you know who else i would give a pass out of all the people in the country do you know who else would get a pass for saying something is as provocative as this nobody nobody else nope michael flynn was a victim of our government he was a victim of our government like a big victim a big conspicuous victim of the government he wasn't a victim of a crime he wasn't a victim of bad luck he wasn't a victim of natural disasters he was a victim targeted specifically by the government of the united states if michael flynn says they should all be shot i would disagree with that vigorously and i would support his right to say it i support his right to say it he earned it right if there's one person in the country who can say that without me bothering to you know make a deal about it it's him he's the only one you know maybe i could think of somebody else but if your government targets you for destruction for political purposes and you call for a violent overthrow of that government you're within your rights it's you're when you're within the rights of free speech and you're not crazy you're not crazy and you've got a perfectly good case my my uh my preference is we don't do that right so so i'm not promoting it i'm not apologizing for it i'm not supporting anything you said i disavow completely but i give him a pass at the same time he's the only one who can say that all right um so cnn as described the the blocking by the republicans of the so-called january 6 commission to look into it so cnn is calling the blocking of that commission a gut punch to democracy so i did a little poll and i asked what is a bigger gut punch to democracy the blocking of the january 6 commission or cnn which is the bigger gut punch to democracy uh the results the last i looked were five percent of respondents said that blocking the january 6 commission is a gut punch to democracy and 95 say cnn is a gut punch to democracy and if you think i like saying gut bunch to democracy well you're right i do like saying it looks like joe biden has introduced a number of overt racist policies to quote close the racial wealth gap you racist you piece of you've taken the best part about this country and you just pissed on it you piece of joe biden you racist piece of all right that's my opinion now let's talk about it um as you know i have been in favor of a creative approach to reparations so out of all the people watching this i might be in the very small percentage of people who say you know we should look at this reparations thing at least you know suss out all the possibilities see what we could do what works what's politically and socially acceptable that might make a difference etc i've argued that you can't get there unless you help all poor people but helping all poor people with an express interest and making sure that we also close you know the the wealth gap i'm fine with that let's close the wealth gap does any does anybody have a problem with poor people doing better no it's just how you do it right it's the mechanism to make that happen that's the the controversy and so joe biden is going to use government funding to directly benefit black businesses and there are a number number of other things he's looking into but they all have the same element that instead of staying and saying we're going to close the income gap which a lot of people would say is a good idea as long as you're not just taking it from the rich and transferring it then then it's a different issue but if you could make poor people richer i feel like everybody likes that if you can figure out how to do it but so biden has figured out how to do reparations so instead of asking people to write a check to individual you know black americans who were descended from slavery which would be almost impossible to figure out how to do it how much who pays who doesn't pay who gets it who doesn't get it that would be impossible but biden actually found a workaround so let me start by saying good job you know the most annoying thing that i'll ever do is complement people's effectiveness even if i hate what they're doing all right now i did it i did it consistently with trump i would talk about his technique separate from whether i liked it or not right or whether i like the policy or not that's a separate question and i'm going to say that joe biden was in a tough spot because people wanted reparations but he really couldn't do that there wasn't any way he could just figure out a way to for the government to cut checks and just give him to black americans that wasn't going to happen but he found a workaround he will increase our taxes and or increase our debt and funnel a lot of that money um most of it comes from rich people because that's who pays taxes mostly and you'll give it to black businesses specifically and other things that are targeted for the for black americans now that of course is just pure racism and you it's pure racism so i don't support racism in any direction because that's not the country i want to live in and indeed i would move out of the country if this becomes more of a norm than it is it's already pretty bad now i'm speaking of somebody who's lost a couple of jobs some of you know my story i've written about it a lot because i'm white specifically because i'm white and male in other words my bosses told me directly we can't promote you because you're white and male and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon two different jobs which is why i'm a cartoonist i had to go work for myself because having a boss didn't work maybe you've seen a cartoon about that bosses that are not good for you so i hate joe biden he's a racist and he's introducing racist policies and he should be completely disavowed but if i'm looking at the quality of his technique it's pretty good it's pretty good if he pulls this off i think he's got a good argument that he helped black americans and they might reward him or the democrats in elections so politically it's probably pretty good he's just a racist all right uh biden has a china problem uh i think liz peek was writing about this on fox news website and the problem goes like this we have all these things we need to negotiate with china but here's my question do you personally know how much china knows about hunter biden do you i mean you know what the news has reported that hunter biden did or allegedly did or did not right uh michael says if they could do it to michael flynn they can do it to anybody and get away with yeah that's true that's true but biden has a problem which is you've probably heard this standard before that if somebody has a conflict of interest they should call it out and um yeah that's this good point joe biden was responsible for the destruction of general flynn by calling out the logan act and biden's the the government if you were michael flynn and the very guy who was like at the center of your targeting was running the government would you be in favor of a violent overthrow of the government maybe maybe you would be yeah all right so anyway uh biden has a china problem which is you've heard the saying that you should avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest correct not only do i have something on my shirt you should you should not only avoid actual conflict of interest but you want to avoid the appearance of it because the the effectiveness of our government is partly if not largely based on their credibility if the government is doing good things or at least trying to do good things you'll say all right you know you can you can still be in charge but what if you don't know if joe biden's decisions are based on maybe concern about what china knows about his son do you know you don't know what china knows do you you don't know what joe biden knows about hunter you don't know what turbine knows about himself you don't know so how can joe biden be our credible leader against the number one important topic to this country which is you know the future of the united states visa of the china it's our it's one of our biggest questions if not the biggest question it's probably the biggest question and our leader is the only person i know of there must be more but the only one i know of who i can't trust right now i'm not saying i can't trust him because he's a democrat and i'm not saying i can't trust him because he's joe biden i actually do think a democrat and and a joe biden without any you know conflict would be perfectly capable of you know dealing with china but somebody whose son might be a risk i don't think so i don't i don't think we can trust biden on any china question so what do you do about that well i almost think that biden should recuse himself except if he did it would sort of indicate that biden's guilty so he can't even recuse himself now how would a president recuse himself because there's nobody to take the president's job right like who steps in and the only way i can imagine would be to set up some kind of a commission of people who are not joe biden and they could be just democrats because they would report to him and had that commission come up with recommendations and the commission would not have a bias and then you would see if you know biden uses what they come up with but you'd be concerned that they would be co-opted to do whatever biden wanted so maybe that wouldn't work either ken davis says this marks five episodes where you haven't made me mad try harder well ken i think transgender athletes should have every right to compete anywhere they want actually i don't believe that what i do believe is that all athletes should be competing against people who are of similar capabilities i don't think that their genders should matter so i don't think that we should be having you know men's teams and women's teams only i think we should also have co-ed teams and then people can just play with the you know whatever level that they're that they're capable to play with so i don't believe that we should keep the teams the way they are with just women and just men and then throw some transgender athletes into the mix and hope it works out because it won't obviously it won't so my point on the transgender thing which i don't know if i ever said it clearly is people are not broken the system of how we organize and do sports is completely broken and if you think that the problem is with the people i don't think that's a good way to organize society i think we should always say okay people you're all really different but none of you are broken right for our purposes you're all just different we're not going to judge you you're just different and if you have a system that can't handle the differences among people without breaking well your system's broken it's not a problem with the people people are fine we're all different all right get over it make a system that works when you know people are all different if you can't make that system don't complain about the people and it would be easy to make that system i've been in such a system i've been on co-ed teams in which the gender didn't matter at all it only mattered if you could play at the level of the other the other players that's all didn't matter anything else uh yeah the and i'm saying in the comments the issue of transgender on uh on minors i don't approve of transgender surgery on minors let me say that clearly i don't i don't approve of that unfortunately it's also not my decision because i do approve of the parents being able to control the the fate of their family and that's not always going to be good right sometimes they're going to make bad decisions sometimes tragic decisions but i don't think i should be making that decision for some other family i just think it's a mistake and unambiguously a mistake uh if those kids want to make those decisions later in life that's different all right um all right forget that one you know i can't get over this fact that the survey showed that people who are very liberal especially the white women have way more mental illness than other people and here's a question i don't really know has been answered scott's silly argument well i will hide you so you disappeared you can tell me what's wrong with my arguments that's always acceptable but if you write in all caps scott's silly argument then then i got to deal with you i got to take care of that all right so what do you think do you think having a mental disorder makes you more likely to say you're very liberal or does being very liberal cause a mental illness which one causes the other or is there any causation maybe it's just a correlation that has nothing to do with any causation what do you think because i feel like it might be both it might be that having a mental illness causes you to be very liberal because there's a lot you have to accept that doesn't quite fit the rational model but it could also be that buying into a certain set of fears and a certain frame of how the world works and whether you're a victim or not could cause you mental illness yeah i think it's bi-directional like a lot of things are in fact if you're gonna if you had a new situation and you said oh there's some cause and there's some effect and you don't know anything about anything your best guess is that it's bi-directional because a lot of things are all right so here are some taboo topics we can't talk too much about whether your phone causes mental illness because nobody wants to get rid of their phone and the companies that make them make a lot of money and we just don't want to talk about that too much even though we know it's a giant problem we don't want to talk about whether fake news causes mental illness because of course it does of course it does and i would think that watching cnn would cause mental illness not a joke not a joke it seems to me obvious that if you watch the cnn and msnbc you would get mental illness and i'm not joking about that that's just dead serious and it's not partisan it's just observational i look at the things they say imagine for example you thought you really lived in the country in which the president had really said that neo-nazis were very fine people now most of you watching this know that that didn't happen it was a fake edit and that he said exactly the opposite strongly but maybe three quarters of the country believe that actually happened imagine if you thought that happened i mean seriously imagine if you believed that actually happened that you were living in a country where the president praised white supremacists right on tv how would that make you feel well i feel like i'd have some mental illness i'd have a little bit of anxiety i'd get a little bit depressed i feel like we're doomed so yes cnn causes mental illness there's no doubt in my mind i mean obviously you have to wait for a scientific you know well-controlled study to know for sure but do you do you really need to wait for the study sometimes things are a little too obvious you don't have to wait for the study but i could be wrong i always keep that i always i always try to keep that recording going by the way this is a trick that i teach you in my book loserthink that is good to when you have a strong opinion about something especially if you're really certain when you sometimes when you state your opinion with certainty just cap it off with but i could be wrong it's just a good hygiene for your brain you should always remind yourself especially when you're certain but i could be wrong it gives you a little mental out because i don't know this for sure but i think it gives you a little protection against cognitive dissonance compare these two things i'm definitely right versus i'm very confident about this but you know i could be wrong and then what happens if you find out you are wrong well the person who says i'm definitely right will be triggered into cognitive dissonance because they don't want to be wrong that's what causes cognitive dissonance so saying you're positive and sticky with it is a trap because if it turns out you're wrong or there's counter evidence you won't be able to see it it'll be like it'll be invisible to you it's like causing yourself mental illness you you blind yourself by being certain but if you just add this little bit of technique you say i'm quite i'm quite confident this is true but i could be wrong that's your escape because let's say you discover that you are wrong now you've said i'm very confident but i could be wrong are you triggered into cognitive dissonance maybe but i always think you're a little bit safer because you have two opinions one is i'm confident and two is that i could be wrong and then when it turns out you're wrong you say well i told you i could be wrong see at least you have an out you have an out that protects your ego which in theory should protect you from being triggered into cognitive dissonance but if you've never given yourself that out i think you're more likely to get triggered into cognitive distance all right here's a story you'll never see see if you can google because i couldn't find it see if you can find a credible study that tracks happiness over time in the united states by ethnicity so that if you could tell for example let's say asian americans their happiness line went like this versus you know white americans versus black americans you could actually see over time you know that how their arc of their their happiness changed why doesn't that exist seems like seems like just the most important thing you'd ever want to do doesn't it why doesn't that exist you know why right now science tells us that baseline happiness doesn't change much and it doesn't even change much based on your circumstances at least until you get a certain amount of money right like 75 000 a year or something like that so certainly you can be in such a bad situation that you're unhappy no matter what but for people who are eating you know they they can take care of their basics happiness is pretty similar i think so what would happen to the call for reparations if you found out that black americans were on average just as happy as white americans what problem are you solving right it becomes complicated because if you're trying to problem solve the problem of giving everybody an equal life or at least equal opportunity for a good life what happens if they're all equally happy already if everybody's just as happy don't need to do anything or at least you don't need to transfer resources but i think there's a reason that we'll never see that study unless you can find it if you can find it tweet it at me and then lastly i would say that we should stop calling the the question of nuclear energy a debate because i don't believe there are any smart well-informed people who are opposed to nuclear energy i don't believe there are any on the right and i don't believe there are any on the left i don't believe anybody who is well informed about nuclear energy opposes it in 2021 now of course you can find an exception watch me use the technique again but of course i could be wrong there could be some people who are well informed and against it but there'd be very few so you don't need to show me the one person who's against it right science as a body is pro-nuclear energy unambiguously if you're pro-science but your anti-nuclear energy well you have some explaining to do because that doesn't make sense all right take it take a side and stick with it i'm pro-science and so i'm pro-nuclear energy and anybody who's well-informed knows the same and maybe we should just treat it that way because there's some things we treat as a difference in opinion and it really isn't it's a different it's just the difference in knowledge and so i would like to see polling separated by what demographic groups have more mental illness and by let's say how well informed people are on a topic wouldn't you like to see a poll that only showed what the opinion of well-informed people think right how hard would it be answer these six questions about nuclear power if you get all six right you're a well-informed person and now let's see what your opinion is and now let's weight it so that the smart people get more weight on their opinion and then show me the result that's what i want to see why do i want to see a poll that averages well-informed people's opinions with furniture pets and imaginary people right i don't need an average of crap i'd love to see an average of well-informed people wouldn't you it'd be interesting to see an average of uninformed people just to see how different they are but i don't want to add the well-informed people to the uninformed people and get an average what the hell is that it's nothing all right it's nothing now there are lots of topics like should you stand for the flag whatever that there that everybody is just as well informed right there's there's no lack of information that matters but on nuclear energy it's just how informed you are that's all that matters to your opinion almost right all right i gotta go run and do something else right now and i will talk to you tomorrow
hey everybody
yes it's time again for the best time of
the whole
day we call it coffee with scott adams
and i think you'd like to enjoy it to
the max
some of you are thinking oh no
i don't need it i'll be fine without the
simultaneous sip
will you will you really well
i wouldn't want to try it if i were you
but hey it's your life it's a free
country
but for the rest of you who would like
to maximize your experience
connecting with people all over the
world simultaneously
all you need is a copper ember glass of
tanker jealousy style in a canteen
jugger flask a vessel of any kind
and happy birthday also
it's time for the unparalleled pleasure
the dopamine of the day the thing that
makes everything better
that's right it's a simultaneous set but
it's coming after you
right now go
and if this is the first time you've
caught one of these live
congratulations you are on it
and i think that should be commended
well there's some new research into lsd
and the research says there's a
hypothesis
that suggests that psychedelics will
unwind the influence
one's prior beliefs have on the brain
allowing thoughts to flow more freely
unimpeded
by past assumptions there were two ways
to discover this to be true one way
was to do science and research it
the other way is to do a psychedelic
because you know who could have told you
the answer of this research
question everybody who took a
psychedelic
everybody who took a psychedelic will
tell you
that their previous assumptions and the
frame that they add for reality
just gets blown up and that's the weird
thing
the the big the big thing that you take
away
is that you can view the world
completely differently and here's the
important part
you can view the world completely
differently
and it still works that's the thing you
that you'll never forget because if you
see the world looking differently and it
all doesn't work
more like a dream you know if you have a
dream
things don't sort of make sense that it
doesn't work so that would be
a dream would be a view of the world
that's just random and
you know it's not built to work but you
could be tripping your balls off
and still order an uber and go to the
beach right
it still works reality still works
even when it's completely different and
once you realize the subjective nature
of reality
then a lot of those things you thought
were problems that were gonna
end you such as even depression even
neuroticism
there or anxiety i think more so
the there's lots of evidence
to show that psychedelics could just
wipe out
um a whole number of mental problems
that
are more acquired problems as opposed to
organic i think
i think that would be the difference but
i'm not positive about that
when i talk about the golden age coming
this is one of the biggest parts
the the fact that psychedelics mushrooms
in particular i think
uh are becoming they're they're moving
solidly into the mainstream
no doubt about it and that happens of
course because there's a certain age of
people
and when they get in power suddenly
their people
have done psychedelics and suddenly it
doesn't seem too bad to them
now that they're in power so i think i
think maybe the next
one to three years something gigantic is
going to happen
with psychedelics and it won't just
change how you feel about stuff it will
change the world
because how you feel about stuff depends
how you act
and how you act changes the world so
there's something
really really big coming in this domain
and i don't know exactly how it's going
to turn out but i think mostly positive
and maybe not even mostly it could be
something like
one of the greatest things that's
happened to civilization
it could be that big and that's not an
exaggeration by the way
anybody who's experienced psychedelics
i think 80 percent of you would agree
with that statement
that it's it's going to transform
civilization
it won't just be a thing that's
happening
um cernovich says i'm saying in the
comments mike's image says that
calling it plant medicine is a better
frame
maybe yeah it might go down better with
the public
uh there's a story about naomi osaka one
of the best
female tennis players in the world just
pulled out of the french open
she was getting a lot of heat because
she was refusing to do media interviews
which of course is an essential part of
the job of being a top athlete
you don't really get to not do the
interview because that's part of the
show
right and people are paying you a lot of
money to put on a show
you can't just skip an important part of
it but she decided to
pull out of the french open entirely and
she said she didn't want to do these
interviews
to protect her mental health what the
hell does that mean
i mean it's probably important i'm not
going to minimize it because when
somebody says they need to do something
for their mental health
i feel as if we should you know our
first impression
should be to believe them right because
the last thing you want to do is to
minimize somebody's mental health
issues so i believe there's a real issue
but it's confusing because this is
somebody who can handle
playing at the highest level of a sport
in front of a stadium full of people
televised to the world
and somehow she pulls that off so i'm
not sure how talking to the media
would give you a mental health problem
so there's something missing in the
story
what is what is the connection between
the media and mental health
but it's interesting let's maybe we'll
find out more about that
i don't want to dump on her it would be
easy to do that but i feel like we don't
know enough about this
and when somebody makes a claim that's a
health related claim
i think you give them the benefit of
doubt first
well something interesting happening in
israel
uh apparently israel had been
considering
some kind of a green pass system
so that if you were vaccinated you could
do things but if you weren't vaccinated
you couldn't
but apparently israel has done so well
at vaccinating
so many of their citizens that they're
going to drop plans for it
so remember i told you not to worry
about vaccination passports
because if they happened they would be
temporary
and this is a a perfect example not only
in israel does it look like they uh
they'll be less than temporary
they will be strongly considered and
then not even used
because vaccinations made them
unnecessary so that's the same direction
we're going
you know there'll be lots of edge
questions about
cruise ships you know there'll be
special cases where
people are genuinely in close contact
and maybe it's not quite
ready yet you know you could argue that
but for all the easy stuff
such as the workplace you're not going
to
need any kind of a pass
um speaking of mask mandates at work
it looks like the the occupational
safety and health organization so this
is a u.s group
called osha they may still issue a
workplace mask mandate
consistent with biden's orders executive
orders but that would be
at odds with the cdc's
guidelines the vaccinated people don't
need to wear masks
indoors so you're
you're an american citizen and you know
that the cdc says you don't need the
masks
indoors if you're vaccinated but osha
who's also you know looking out for your
safety in the workplace
might say that you do so i think this is
undetermined yet but they might say that
you do
here's my take on this and i've told you
before
um the public is in charge
all right if you think the government's
in charge with this masked
mandate stuff there's something about
the world that you don't understand
the government's not in charge the
people will decide
when they're done with masks and where
and they'll decide by just doing it
because because if enough people do it
it's unarrestable
right it's there's no there's no
recourse
it's just how many people do it if one
person
violates a rule well they're in trouble
two people
probably in trouble three people they're
in trouble four people they're probably
in trouble
a thousand people nobody's in trouble
yeah if a thousand people decide well
today's the day no mask
and i think that in the workplace
specifically the workplace
i can't imagine any workplace that i've
been in
where we wouldn't walk into the
workplace and say hey everybody
let's have a meeting the osha says this
cdc says this what do you say
and the meeting would say if you're
vaccinated take your mask off
and that would be it and that office
at least that floor of that office would
be mask free
and then other people would hear about
that floor and they'd say did you get
away with it
so far no penalty and then they would do
it too
so the next 30 days the public will
completely take control of this issue
again not counting stuff like cruise
ships right there will be special cases
and i don't think the public is
quite qualified for those but when you
talk about something like
the workplace and the cdc has already
weighed in about the risks
i do think the public is qualified to
make a decision about their risk reward
and the public will make that decision
so don't
don't ever believe that the government's
in charge
you know they're in charge in an
emergency they're in charge in some
specific situations
but they're not in charge the public is
always in charge
they just have to choose to use their
authority or not that's the only
decision
it may be that if ocean gets away with
this you'll see more
remote work and maybe that's good you
know
there's an argument to be made that the
best thing that could happen
is for osha to require masks at work in
the workplace
and that will cause people to say okay
i'm not going to work
i'll just work from home and
if it's a little bit more pressure on
making that happen
maybe that would be good i don't want to
see masks in the workplace if you're
vaccinated
but you know anything could happen
i've got a warning for you and maybe
you're already aware of this
this is a big big warning
and i don't know if there'll be anything
more important than this that'll happen
in the next several months you know
short of a war breaking out
and it goes like this the end of the
pandemic
is going to cause a mental health crisis
bigger than the pandemic itself
now how many of you know why that is in
the comments see
let's see if you can tell me why so this
is the statement
we do know that the pandemic almost
certainly
has caused more mental health problems
definitely wouldn't you say
my prediction is that the end of it you
know the period where you're
transitioning
from pandemic to non-pandemic will be
way worse for mental health like way
worse
like by a factor of three something like
that
won't even be close and let me tell you
why
you're not used to seeing people you're
also not used to your old routine
you don't know who you are anymore we
have to figure out who we
are i was reading an article that a lot
of relationships maybe
stay together during the pandemic but
will probably
be ripped apart as soon as your
requirements for what you need to do and
not do change so i would expect massive
divorce
massive mental illness and probably
violence
you know that comes with it and i've
noted by the way that mental health is
usually the worst
in june now in a normal weir
mental health is definitely the worst in
june in my
observed opinion i don't know if there's
any science to it
but observationally when kids get out of
school
in june at least in the united states
your
all of your routines change and you just
flip out
like the family can't figure out who's
doing what when and the stress goes
through the roof and
easy things become hard things and so
anytime you have a massive
civilization change of schedule
people flip out so the end of the
pandemic is going to be one of the
biggest
mental shifts we've ever had to have and
i've got to tell you
i'm already feeling it
yesterday for example i was insanely
bored
like really really bored and i thought
to myself well
i'm bored but realistically where i live
i can
kind of do most things right i can now
go to a restaurant
don't even need my mask i can ride a
bike i can even join my gym again i'd
need a mask in the gym but i can join
the gym
again i can go to the gym so i can do
almost
anything i can travel and
i didn't like it i didn't like it at all
so in other words freedom
caused a mental illness and i think that
that's actually
normal as soon as you get more freedom
and you can't just follow your routine
you're gonna flip out now not all of you
some of you will just be much happier
and that's the end of the story
everybody's different right but it's a
warning
if everything i know about the human
mind and the way we think
is true and i'm pretty confident it is
there's going to be a massive mental
health problem over the summer
and probably lasting into the fall but
be ready for that
and when it happens to you you'll you'll
expect it maybe you can handle it better
rasmussen has a interesting poll today
about
race relations asking the question are
race relations better in the united
states
since the election of joe biden and
what do you think people said are race
relations better or worse
under biden what do you think well the
answer is
28 said it's better but more people
39 said it's worse as you might imagine
more conservatives said it's worse than
liberals so people basically support
their team
but so conservatives said it only 12
percent said it's better
but liberal said 54 is better
then the follow-up question has life for
black americans gotten better or worse
since biden was elected 22 said it's
gotten better
29 said it got worse so
how do you explain that biden gets into
office presumably
according to a lot of people on the left
replacing the worst person who ever
lived donald trump
a racist they say so if you get rid of
trump
and you bring in biden you know
obama's ex-vice president
he's got a bunch of plans now for a
whole bunch of racist policies i'll talk
about in a minute
but they're racist in a way that would
help black americans and yet
they feel it's getting worse what's
going on
it's the news right the news
makes us think things are getting worse
no matter what is actually happening
because the news needs to need you to
think that race relations are getting
worse
it's just the news do you think race
relations are getting worse
well yes because of the news
so the news has this ability to make
things worse and then assign the blame
to other people
which is the world we live in speaking
of messed up things
uh twitter user alan mclaude mcleod
i think mccloud points out that the
washington post
led somebody who's a on the board of
directors of a military drone company
they make military drones writes an
opinion piece in the washington post
saying that to avoid wider war iran must
be deterred with
limited us military strikes do you know
how you do a
limited us military strike
what would make it hmm
what kind of military assets would you
likely employ
if you wanted your military action to be
limited
could it be drones
maybe drones yeah
so the washington post runs
an opinion piece from a drone maker
guy a guy who's on the board of
directors of a drone maker
saying we should do some more war that
just
happens to you some drones he might own
some
stock in that company what do you think
do you think somebody on the board of
directors owns some stock
in the company yeah yeah
and did the washington post say uh
beware of this opinion because it's
coming from somebody who would make a
lot of money
if you bought into this opinion i don't
believe they did
i think that uh alan happened to look
into the person who wrote the article
and made that discovery or somebody did
so how about that for your news business
uh michael flynn raised some eyebrows
uh was it yesterday he made the comments
at some event in dallas
which is reported to be a you know q
anon conspiracy event i don't know if it
was
but flynn was asked this question on
stage
uh somebody said i want to know what
happened
uh i want to know why what happened in
minamar
myanmar can't happen here meaning a
military coup and so this is a member of
the audience asked
michael flynn when flynn was on stage
here was flynn's answer
no reason i mean it should happen here
no reason that's right
what what wait
did michael flynn just say that there
should be
a military coup in the united states
now that's how the news is is handling
it
is that what he said now this is all we
know
and as far as i know this is not a
rupaur video
meaning i don't think it's selectively
edited it looks like he actually said
that
if i'm wrong about that as selectively
edited somebody let me know in the
comments
but i don't think it was so what do you
make of that
a military person from this country
retired
but a general who had lots of access at
the highest levels of
of intel at least at one point and he
says
that there's no reason we shouldn't go
the way of
myanmar i can't pronounce it should
happen here
what do you make of that
all right here's what i make of it first
of all i don't think too many people are
taking this seriously
and i don't i'm not worried that this
will form some kind of violent
revolution but
if you were to take let's say all of the
370 million people in america whatever
the number is
if you round up all the americans that
there are
and then i ask you this question out of
all the americans
is there one
is there one american who has a right
to call for a violent revolution in the
united states
and of all of them and of all the
americans who's the one person
you say to yourself okay if he said it
all right i can get that michael flynn
now i'm not going to say that
he said something that was good
or smart or beneficial to the country
so i'm not going to back him in his
opinion
i i rebuke his opinion we do not need
violence in this country we certainly
don't need a violent revolution
but this is just me
and i don't ask you to do the same thing
all right this is just me
you make your own decisions michael
flynn
gets a pass do you know who else i would
give a pass
out of all the people in the country do
you know who else would get a pass for
saying something
is as provocative as this
nobody nobody else nope
michael flynn was a victim of our
government
he was a victim of our government like a
big victim
a big conspicuous victim
of the government he wasn't a victim of
a crime he wasn't a victim of
bad luck he wasn't a victim of
natural disasters he was a victim
targeted specifically by the government
of the united states
if michael flynn says they should all be
shot i would disagree with that
vigorously
and i would support his right to say it
i support his right to say it he earned
it
right if there's one person in the
country who can say that without
me bothering to you know make a deal
about it it's him he's the only one
you know maybe i could think of somebody
else but if your government targets you
for destruction
for political purposes and you call for
a violent overthrow of that government
you're within your rights it's you're
when you're within the rights of free
speech
and you're not crazy you're not crazy
and you've got a perfectly
good case my my uh
my preference is we don't do that right
so so i'm not promoting it i'm not
apologizing for it i'm not supporting
anything you said
i disavow completely but i give him a
pass at the same time he's the only one
who can say that
all right um
so cnn as described the the blocking by
the republicans
of the so-called january 6 commission to
look into it
[Music]
so cnn is calling the blocking of that
commission a gut punch to democracy
so i did a little poll and i asked what
is a bigger gut punch to democracy
the blocking of the january 6 commission
or
cnn which is the bigger gut punch to
democracy
uh the results the last i looked were
five percent of respondents said that
blocking the january 6 commission is a
gut punch to democracy and 95 say
cnn is a gut punch to democracy
and if you think i like saying gut bunch
to democracy
well you're right
i do like saying it looks like
joe biden has introduced a number of
overt racist policies
to quote close the racial wealth gap
you racist you piece of
you've taken the best part about this
country and you just pissed on it
you piece of joe biden you
racist
piece of all right that's my
opinion now let's talk about it
um as you know
i have been in favor of a creative
approach to
reparations so
out of all the people watching this i
might be in the very small percentage of
people who say
you know we should look at this
reparations thing
at least you know suss out all the
possibilities
see what we could do what works what's
politically and
socially acceptable that might make a
difference etc
i've argued that you can't get there
unless you help all poor people
but helping all poor people with an
express interest and making sure that we
also close
you know the the wealth gap i'm fine
with that
let's close the wealth gap
does any does anybody have a problem
with poor people doing better
no it's just how you do it right it's
the mechanism to make that happen that's
the the controversy
and so joe biden is going to use
government funding to
directly benefit black businesses and
there are a number
number of other things he's looking into
but they all have the same
element that instead of staying and
saying we're going to close
the income gap which a lot of people
would say is a good idea
as long as you're not just taking it
from the rich and transferring it then
then it's a different issue
but if you could make poor people richer
i feel like everybody likes that if you
can figure out how to do it
but so biden has figured out how to do
reparations
so instead of asking people to write a
check to
individual you know black americans who
were descended from slavery
which would be almost impossible to
figure out how to do it how much who
pays who doesn't pay
who gets it who doesn't get it that
would be impossible but biden actually
found a workaround
so let me start by saying
good job you know the most annoying
thing that i'll ever do
is complement people's effectiveness
even if i hate what they're doing all
right now i did it
i did it consistently with trump i would
talk about his technique
separate from whether i liked it or not
right or whether i like the policy or
not that's a separate question
and i'm going to say that joe biden was
in a tough spot
because people wanted reparations but he
really couldn't do that
there wasn't any way he could just
figure out a way to
for the government to cut checks and
just give him to black americans that
wasn't going to happen
but he found a workaround he will
increase our taxes and or
increase our debt and funnel a lot of
that money
um most of it comes from rich people
because that's who pays taxes mostly
and you'll give it to black businesses
specifically and
other things that are targeted for the
for black americans
now that of course is just pure racism
and you
it's pure racism so i don't support
racism
in any direction because that's not the
country i want to live in
and indeed i would move out of the
country if this becomes
more of a norm than it is it's already
pretty bad now i'm speaking of somebody
who's lost a couple of jobs
some of you know my story i've written
about it a lot
because i'm white specifically because
i'm white
and male in other words my bosses told
me
directly we can't promote you because
you're white and male
and it doesn't look like that's going to
change anytime soon two different jobs
which is why i'm a cartoonist i had to
go work for myself
because having a boss didn't work
maybe you've seen a cartoon about that
bosses that are not
good for you so i hate joe biden he's
a racist and he's introducing
racist policies
and he should be completely disavowed
but if i'm looking at the quality of his
technique
it's pretty good it's pretty good
if he pulls this off i think he's got a
good argument that he helped
black americans and they might reward
him or the democrats in
elections so politically it's probably
pretty good
he's just a racist all right uh
biden has a china problem
uh i think liz peek was writing about
this on fox news website
and the problem goes like this we have
all these things we need to negotiate
with china
but here's my question do you personally
know how much china knows about hunter
biden
do you i mean you know what the news has
reported that hunter biden
did or allegedly did or did not right
uh michael says if they could do it to
michael flynn they can do it to anybody
and get away with yeah that's true
that's true but biden has a problem
which is you've probably heard this
standard before
that if somebody has a conflict of
interest
they should call it out and
um yeah that's this good point joe biden
was responsible for the destruction of
general flynn
by calling out the logan act and biden's
the the government
if you were michael flynn and the very
guy who
was like at the center of your targeting
was running the government would you be
in favor of a violent
overthrow of the government maybe
maybe you would be yeah all right
so anyway uh biden has a china problem
which is you've heard the saying that
you should avoid even the appearance of
conflict of interest
correct not only do i have something on
my shirt
you should you should not only avoid
actual conflict of interest
but you want to avoid the appearance of
it
because the the effectiveness of our
government
is partly if not largely based on their
credibility
if the government is doing good things
or at least trying to do good things
you'll say all right
you know you can you can still be in
charge but what if
you don't know if joe biden's decisions
are based on maybe concern about what
china knows about
his son do you know you don't know what
china knows do you
you don't know what joe biden knows
about hunter you don't know what turbine
knows about himself
you don't know so
how can joe biden be
our credible leader against the number
one important
topic to this country which is you know
the future of the united states
visa of the china it's our it's one of
our biggest questions if not the biggest
question it's probably the biggest
question
and our leader is the only person i know
of
there must be more but the only one i
know of
who i can't trust right
now i'm not saying i can't trust him
because he's a democrat and i'm not
saying i can't trust him because he's
joe biden
i actually do think a democrat and
and a joe biden without any you know
conflict
would be perfectly capable of you know
dealing with china
but somebody whose son might be a risk
i don't think so i don't i don't think
we can trust biden on any
china question so what do you do about
that
well i almost think that biden should
recuse himself
except if he did it would sort of
indicate that biden's guilty
so he can't even recuse himself now how
would a president recuse himself because
there's nobody
to take the president's job right like
who steps in
and the only way i can imagine
would be to set up some kind of a
commission of people who are not joe
biden
and they could be just democrats because
they would report to him and had that
commission come up with recommendations
and the commission would not have a bias
and then you would see if
you know biden uses what they come up
with but you'd be concerned that they
would be
co-opted to do whatever biden wanted so
maybe that wouldn't work either
ken davis says this marks five episodes
where you haven't made me mad
try harder well ken
i think transgender athletes should have
every right to compete
anywhere they want
actually i don't believe that what i do
believe is that all
athletes should be competing against
people who are of
similar capabilities i don't think
that their genders should matter so i
don't think
that we should be having you know men's
teams and women's teams
only i think we should also have co-ed
teams
and then people can just play with the
you know whatever level that they're
that they're capable to play with so i
don't believe that we should keep the
teams
the way they are with just women and
just men
and then throw some transgender athletes
into the mix and hope it works out
because it won't obviously it won't
so my point on the transgender thing
which i don't know if i ever said it
clearly
is people are not broken
the system of how we organize and do
sports
is completely broken and if you think
that the problem is with the people
i don't think that's a good way to
organize society i think we should
always say okay people
you're all really different but none of
you are broken
right for our purposes you're all just
different we're not going to judge you
you're just different and if you have a
system
that can't handle the differences among
people without breaking
well your system's broken it's not a
problem with the people
people are fine we're all different all
right get over it
make a system that works when you know
people are all different
if you can't make that system don't
complain about the people
and it would be easy to make that system
i've been in such a system
i've been on co-ed teams in which the
gender didn't matter at all
it only mattered if you could play at
the level of the other the other players
that's all
didn't matter anything else
uh yeah the and i'm saying in the
comments the issue of
transgender on uh on minors
i don't approve of transgender surgery
on minors
let me say that clearly i don't i don't
approve of that
unfortunately it's also not my decision
because i do approve of the parents
being able to control the
the fate of their family and that's not
always going to be good
right sometimes they're going to make
bad decisions sometimes tragic decisions
but i don't think i should be making
that decision for some other family
i just think it's a mistake and
unambiguously a mistake
uh if those kids want to make those
decisions later in life
that's different all right um
all right forget that one you know i
can't get over this fact that
the survey showed that people who are
very liberal
especially the white women have way more
mental illness
than other people and here's a question
i don't really know has been answered
scott's silly argument well i will
hide you so you disappeared
you can tell me what's wrong with my
arguments that's always acceptable
but if you write in all caps scott's
silly argument then
then i got to deal with you i got to
take care of that
all right so what do you think do you
think having a mental disorder makes you
more likely to
say you're very liberal or does being
very liberal
cause a mental illness which one causes
the other
or is there any causation maybe it's
just a correlation that has nothing to
do with any causation
what do you think because i feel like it
might be both
it might be that having a mental illness
causes you to be very liberal
because there's a lot you have to accept
that doesn't quite
fit the rational model but it could also
be
that buying into a certain set of fears
and a certain frame of how the world
works and whether you're a victim or not
could cause you mental illness yeah i
think it's bi-directional
like a lot of things are in fact if
you're gonna
if you had a new situation and you said
oh there's some cause and there's some
effect
and you don't know anything about
anything your best guess
is that it's bi-directional because a
lot of things are
all right so here are some taboo topics
we can't talk too much about whether
your phone causes mental illness because
nobody wants to get rid of their phone
and the companies
that make them make a lot of money and
we just don't want to talk about that
too much even though we know it's a
giant problem
we don't want to talk about whether fake
news causes mental illness
because of course it does of course it
does
and i would think that watching cnn
would cause mental illness
not a joke not a joke
it seems to me obvious that if you watch
the cnn and msnbc you would get mental
illness
and i'm not joking about that that's
just dead serious
and it's not partisan it's just
observational
i look at the things they say imagine
for example
you thought you really lived in the
country in which the president
had really said that neo-nazis were very
fine people
now most of you watching this know that
that didn't happen it was a fake edit
and that he said exactly the opposite
strongly
but maybe three quarters of the country
believe that actually happened
imagine if you thought that happened i
mean seriously
imagine if you believed that actually
happened
that you were living in a country where
the president
praised white supremacists right on tv
how would that make you feel well i feel
like i'd have some mental illness
i'd have a little bit of anxiety i'd get
a little bit depressed
i feel like we're doomed so yes
cnn causes mental illness there's no
doubt in my mind
i mean obviously you have to wait for a
scientific
you know well-controlled study to know
for sure
but do you do you really need to wait
for the study
sometimes things are a little too
obvious you don't have to wait for the
study
but i could be wrong i always keep that
i always i always try to keep that
recording going by the way this is a
trick that i teach you in my book
loserthink
that is good to when you have a strong
opinion about something especially if
you're really certain
when you sometimes when you state your
opinion with certainty
just cap it off with but i could be
wrong
it's just a good hygiene for your brain
you should always remind yourself
especially
when you're certain but i could be wrong
it gives you a little mental out because
i don't know this for sure but i think
it gives you a little protection against
cognitive dissonance compare these two
things
i'm definitely right versus
i'm very confident about this but you
know i could be wrong
and then what happens if you find out
you are wrong
well the person who says i'm definitely
right
will be triggered into cognitive
dissonance because they don't want to be
wrong
that's what causes cognitive dissonance
so saying you're positive
and sticky with it is a trap
because if it turns out you're wrong or
there's counter evidence you won't be
able to see it
it'll be like it'll be invisible to you
it's like causing yourself
mental illness you you blind yourself
by being certain but if you just add
this little bit of technique you say
i'm quite i'm quite confident this is
true
but i could be wrong
that's your escape because let's say you
discover that you are wrong
now you've said i'm very confident but i
could be wrong
are you triggered into cognitive
dissonance
maybe but i always think you're a little
bit safer
because you have two opinions one is i'm
confident
and two is that i could be wrong and
then when it turns out you're wrong you
say well i told you i could be wrong
see at least you have an out you have an
out that protects your ego
which in theory should protect you from
being triggered into cognitive
dissonance
but if you've never given yourself that
out i think you're more likely to get
triggered into cognitive distance
all right here's a story you'll never
see
see if you can google because i couldn't
find it see if you can find a credible
study
that tracks happiness over time in the
united states
by ethnicity so that if you could tell
for example
let's say asian americans their
happiness line went like this
versus you know white americans versus
black americans
you could actually see over time you
know that how their arc of their
their happiness changed why doesn't that
exist
seems like seems like just the most
important thing
you'd ever want to do doesn't it why
doesn't that exist
you know why right now science tells us
that baseline happiness doesn't
change much and it doesn't even change
much based on your circumstances
at least until you get a certain amount
of money right like 75 000 a year or
something like that
so certainly you can be in such a bad
situation that you're unhappy
no matter what but for people who are
eating
you know they they can take care of
their basics happiness is pretty similar
i think
so what would happen to the call for
reparations if you found out that black
americans were on average
just as happy as white americans
what problem are you solving right
it becomes complicated because if you're
trying to problem
solve the problem of giving everybody an
equal
life or at least equal opportunity for a
good life
what happens if they're all equally
happy already
if everybody's just as happy
don't need to do anything or at least
you don't need to transfer resources
but i think there's a reason that we'll
never see that study
unless you can find it if you can find
it tweet it at me
and then lastly i would say that we
should stop calling
the the question of nuclear energy a
debate
because i don't believe there are any
smart well-informed
people who are opposed to nuclear energy
i don't believe there are any on the
right and i don't believe there are any
on the left
i don't believe anybody who is well
informed about nuclear energy opposes it
in 2021 now of course you can find an
exception
watch me use the technique again but of
course i could be wrong
there could be some people who are well
informed and against it but there'd be
very few so you don't need to show me
the one person who's against it right
science as a body is pro-nuclear energy
unambiguously if you're pro-science
but your anti-nuclear energy well you
have some explaining to do
because that doesn't make sense all
right take it take a side and stick with
it
i'm pro-science and so i'm pro-nuclear
energy and anybody who's well-informed
knows the same
and maybe we should just treat it that
way because there's some things we treat
as a difference in opinion and it really
isn't
it's a different it's just the
difference in knowledge
and so i would like to see polling
separated by what demographic groups
have more mental illness
and by let's say how well informed
people are on a topic
wouldn't you like to see a poll that
only showed what the opinion of
well-informed
people think right how hard would it be
answer these six questions about nuclear
power
if you get all six right you're a
well-informed person
and now let's see what your opinion is
and now let's weight it
so that the smart people get more weight
on their opinion
and then show me the result that's what
i want to see why do i want to see a
poll
that averages well-informed people's
opinions
with furniture pets and imaginary people
right i don't need an average of
crap i'd love to see an average of
well-informed people
wouldn't you it'd be interesting to see
an average of uninformed people
just to see how different they are but i
don't want to add the well-informed
people to the uninformed people
and get an average what the hell is that
it's nothing all right it's nothing
now there are lots of topics like should
you stand for the flag
whatever that there that everybody is
just as well informed
right there's there's no lack of
information that matters but on nuclear
energy
it's just how informed you are that's
all that matters to your opinion almost
right
all right i gotta go run and do
something else right now and i will talk
to you
tomorrow
