Episode 381 Scott Adams - Buzzfeed, Wall Negotiations, Needle Parks, More

hey everybody come on in here it's the morning but don't let that stop you from having a good time because some of us are mour people the rest of you well I hope you do as well as you could and one of the ways that you can catch up to the morning people is with a little thing I call Coffee and it's time for coffee with Scott Adams I'm Scott Adams your host and I'm about to enjoy the simultaneous sip with many of you those of you who are prepared please raise your mug your glass your container your chalice your Stein your cup put it put your favorite liquid in there I like coffee and join me now for the simultaneous hip ah so many fun things in the news let's start with Buzz.

Feed now uh I like to remind you what my prediction record is now this isn't quite a prediction but I want to remind you that when the Buzz.

Feed story first broke that Michael Cohen had said blah blah blah it doesn't matter what he said because it wasn't true or at least it's Fallen apart and and when I talked about it on Periscope was it yesterday I stressed to you that Buzz.

Feed is not is not a uh credible Source did I not did I not stress several times remember it's Buzz.

Feed they're not a credible source and then by today we find out the whole story is Fallen apart and I was just watching a fascinating clip on CNN it was Anderson Cooper talking to Jeffrey tubin and I forget who El and they were taking it pretty hard because the the mainstream media ran with that story with a lot of if it's true but if it's true and if this is true there's big stories uh but to their credit and I like I like to give credit where credit is due the uh Jeffrey tubin and uh especially he said you know make no mistake about this this is just a bad day for the media yeah Brian Brian stelter that's right he was the third person there and I think all of them realized and yeah Maggie hman was there too and I think all of them realized that uh the media has a big big big credibility problem and it got a lot worse yesterday yesterday but again remember I told you from the jump this is not a credible source so I'm going to take a little bit of credit for calling out the unreliability of the story from from the jump okay now why did I think it was not a credible Story number one the authors have a little sketchy past number two it's Buzz.

Feed that does not necessarily uh work with the facts all the time and number three it fit perfectly with The Narrative of the side that was reporting it oh surprise number four nobody else could confirm it right away number five it was a Muller leak are there Muller leaks remember what I said if if somebody has a source in the Muller organization that would give them that kind of detailed leak remember what I said they would also know what the general outcome of the the Muller investigation is going to be anybody who has a a source that good who was going to give up something that private would have given up more and by now by now Buzz.

Feed would be reporting on basically the result of the uh of the whole thing and of course they're not and so that was another red flag and then of course the whole fact that it was an anonymous source so you've got anonymous source fits their narrative perfectly nobody else can confirm it it's Buzz.

Feed who is unreliable the authors are unreliable if you didn't see this one coming you can't see anything coming cuz this one was broadcasting from a long way around hey fake news coming we got some fake news coming but a lot of people wanted to believe it all right that's enough on that um You probably noted that a lot of people got the talking points about the Pelosi flight to Afghanistan being uh canceled at the last minute by President Trump and the standard reaction was it's childish it's childish like a fifth grader it's such a childish thing to do I don't think that worked as well as they hoped it would because it was also reported simultaneously that it was a tip for Tat but it was a tip for Tat for something childish which was postponing the uh uh the State of the Union so who could possibly listen to the Democrats saying that the the tit fortat response was childish but not the original you know who started it now like most of us I think we're watching this as entertainment right we're watching it as an entertainment show it it was sort of the perfect reality TV response to the reality TV you know provocation which is the cancellation of the uh of the of the whole deal now do you remember that I told you um I don't know how long ago I said that the kill shot for Nancy Pelosi's statement that the wall is immoral what did I tell you the kill shot would that would be the persuasion Kill Shot does anybody remember it cuz I like that I like to ask you cuz in case anybody is coming into this late they can you know get some confirmation that that I'm predicting things ahead of time um now the engineering question is we'll talk about that separately so that's a different that's a different kill shot I'm talking about specifically the question of whether a wall is moral or immoral what did I tell was the best response to that well let me remind you since it doesn't look like anybody's going to get the right answer um I told you that the kill shot was to start asking other Democrats to defend to defend the statement that some walls are moral and some are not and what did you say you saw the media start to ask the other Democrats do you agree that this wall is immoral because it's a completely unsupportable concept now Pelosi could probably get away with it because Pelosi is an advocate right so when you see that the head of the party you know so or you know one of the leaders of the party when you see them say something crazy you say to yourself well their job is Advocate you know Nancy P's job is not fair and balanced presentation right so you can't really hold it against her to say something that outrageous it's something the president would have done it's it's something that somebody who's a leader and an advocate does but the problem is she created a standard that the people below her who are just many of them who are actually just trying to do their job they're going to have to defend this ridiculous standard that there's such a thing as a moral versus an immoral kind of barrier when all of these people have voted for barriers of this type in the past so you saw people asking about it and that whole moral immoral thing has just started to I don't know rot you know it didn't go away it just started to rot from within like it it just doesn't stand the test of time at all you put a little sunlight on it it's like it's like an old vampire it's starting to crumble anyway so uh the president apparently has a speech today at I guess 300 p.m.

eastern time in which he's going to offer reportedly you know any Anything could happen between now and the time the president goes on the air but reportedly the president's going to make some kind of an offer to to have something for both sides to chew on now here's a um here's a rule of negotiating and if you've never heard this rule it's a really important one but it's not common sense so this is a non-common sense really smart rule about negotiating you don't quote negotiate with yourself unquote let me tell you what that means what that means is let's say you and I are negotiating and I come to you and say I will give you a million dollar for whatever it is you're selling and we're negotiating if you say no that's that's no good what you don't do if you've been rebuffed for your first offer is make a second offer that's called negotiating with yourself cuz you're the one who offered a million and now you're the one making the next offer which is lower that that's referred to as negotiating with yourself it's a classic mistake that people who don't negotiate make you've watched that the president is very good at not doing that right it's a it's a it's a rock bottom basic most important thing you can do you never make a offer and then just make another offer you you just don't do that it's it's bad persuasion bad negotiating so you've noticed that the Democrats haven't really made an offer not really right because they've said how about nothing how about immoral and the the immoral response isn't really a counter offer is it it's more of like we're not going to talk about it we're not negotiating now the mistake would be that Pelosi would Trav the president into negotiating with himself and if he were not the master Persuader that I believe he is he would be going on television tonight and negotiating with himself in other words she's creating a situation because the thing to keep in mind here we always have to keep this in mind is that Pelosi is pretty damn good at what she does right she knows this space whatever else you want to say about her she's got an aame and she brought it and she was trapping the president into negotiating with himself which is weak and stupid the president is now going to give a give a speech in which he's alleged to be making a second offer or or at least you know a new offer that we haven't seen before that could be construed as negotiating with himself if that's what's going to happen so let me make uh one suggestion and I'm not I'm not going to predict that this the president will do this but it but it's by way of making my point suppose the president went on on the air and made the following offer and he said this I will reopen the government when the Democrats give me their plan for the Border in in a way that has a budget and shows exactly what they plan to do and where H because this is not ask this is not negotiating like I've just decided to go down on my price it's a specific offer that the public will understand as reasonable so imagine this the President says we all want to open the government I will open the government if all you do is show me your plan and then we will negotiate from that plan we will start with your plan and then we'll show it to the people we'll have border patrol look at it and then we'll see how different is your plan from ours now the key to this is that there was never much difference in what the left and the right actually wanted right nothing I said would make sense if you knew you were really far apart cuz if you were really far apart they would just say oh okay how about something way over here and then then you wouldn't be anywhere right but because we know they're close and especially the the rank and file Democrats are like yeah we like border security we just want to do it in the smartest most humane way now who among you disagrees with that statement so here's the Democrat position on border security yes we want good border security we want to do it in the smartest most economical and humane way who disagrees with that who disagrees with that nobody right so when you force them to actually put some meat on their proposal and you offer that you'll open the government if they do it what what voter is going to look at that offer and say well that's just playing games who is going to say that's an unfair offer who is going to say that the Democrats should sit tight and not even say what they want while 800,000 people are eating tree bark cuz they can't afford to buy food all right who thinks that wouldn't work cuz you know it would all right it would put all of the pressure on the Democrats if they brought a plan it would reveal it would reveal the basically the bad I'd say the bad will behind everything they're doing at the moment which is they're not that far off from what everybody else wants now to their credit and I'm going to give the Democrats a very big compliment right now to their credit they have killed the wall I I think that even Republicans at this point because we've all learned more you know there's something about this process that's very educational you know on day one when the president said build a wall across the whole thing solves all these problems I have to admit I thought to myself I don't know why not why wouldn't you have a wall you know I'd have to look at the details but seems reasonable on the surface right but the further you dig into this and the more reasonable people get involved you realize that walls make sense in specific areas and they simply don't make sense economically or on any other level in other areas and that if the engineers get involved and the experts they'll tell you where to put a wall El Paso is a perfect place cuz when you're separating you know water and El Paso I think those are the two places they're both populated areas and you need to slow people down pretty severely because otherwise they disappear into the other populated area but if you got a big empty space and you can see the whole thing with a drone or from Towers or you could put some electronic sensors there if anybody tries to cross you just send out your border patrol and they just pick them up right so there's nobody here who disagrees with the general concept that the engineers and the experts should make the decision we want a solution that's Humane but it also has to work you know who has that plan probably Democrats do you know how similar that would look to the Republican plan probably not that different by the time it's done but it would give everybody a reason to move forward so that's so again it's that's not my that's not my prediction of what the president will do I will say with some confidence it would be the best thing to do I'm I'm completely confident about that part um but here's what to watch for watch for the president avoiding the problem of negotiating with himself one way or another that's his biggest challenge right at the end of this nobody you the president can't have a win and can't even have like a good path forward if at the end of this the enemy is saying well it looks like they tricked him into negotiating with himself he's not much of a negotiator is he so it could be that all he's going to do is throw some variables into the mix so he might say here's here are the other variables here's how we want to approve workers here's what I want to do with H1B visas here's what I want to do with you know path to citizenship and DACA and all that stuff so I might be that he's just adding variables now that would not be a case of negotiating with yourself because I've often said if you have if you have an impass often times the only way you can get past an impass is by adding variables you need you need extra stuff to to make a deal so he may just be adding extra stuff and that would be perfectly fine would not be a case of negotiating with himself per se because he probably wouldn't offer anything that hasn't already been on the table before all right um here's an update on the question of open borders so there was yet another article in the New York Times uh by someone who said yeah let's let's think about open borders you know because they're economic benefits and I want to give you just a a little bit of a tour you know a very short one of open borders now there are people who argue and they have good economic arguments so on a conceptual level just a conceptual level not a practical level but on a conceptual level open borders actually make sense wait for the Practical part before you throw up in your mouth okay if you're just if it's just a thought experiment and you're saying well in a perfect world open borders because the argument is the free flow of uh labor and everything else is just always good basically it's an argument for capitalism and freedom and whenever you have better capitalism and better freedom you almost always get a good result right so on a conceptual level open borders totally conceptually reasonable thing unfortunately we don't live in a conceptual world we we have to survive in the real world and in the so he says my God man have you gone insane wait wait to the second part all right you must be new here wait to the second part and the in the real world the countries that are next to you are not uh equal on all variables their economy could be in the toilet they could have more crime for example I'm not saying that's the case but there could be a terrorism risk some people have a terrorism risk some don't maybe the other countries have uh loose requirements about who gets into their country which would you know be a pathway for anybody else to get into the country so um and then the biggest variable is if there's a country that has um lots of Social Services let's say free health care um your retirement whatever else and they're next to a country that doesn't how's that work out wouldn't wouldn't all the people in the country that doesn't give them free stuff stand up and start walking toward the country that does you wouldn't wouldn't uh you know right now the number of people who come in from Mexico is is putting you know some people think a burden on the employment of the the citizens uh and that's with all the effort we can put into reducing the number coming in what would happen if that number what happens if it's 20 million people a year where where do they live do they live on the street do they make camps on the roads what you know did do they clean up after themselves you know from a practical perspective um the here let me put it another way open borders probably is a really good solution for countries that are largely similar the more similar the countries the more open borders makes perfect sense because let's say you know your your France and Germany or something and I don't know if this is the case but let's say that they have similar social services and let's say they're both similar targets for Terror attacks and anything else well it kind of doesn't matter that much right the terrorists are already in one of the countries and they're happy to attack that one maybe there'll be a little more in your country but you know you probably had the same risk anyway you know so so when you see the open borders people here and here's my statement um that I think is just my opinion alone I don't know anybody else who has this specific opinion but my belief is that the people who talk about open borders literally don't mean it and other words if if you put a camera on them and say do you believe in open borders they say yes and here here are all my arguments but I believe if I took that same person off camera in private and I said look I hear what you're saying you know on a conceptual level it does make sense to remove friction that's good for everything but in a real world you know in a practical world tell me how this looks to you what would keep 50 million people from just entering the United States and what would the United States look like if 50 million people came here and said give me some health care or give me some whatever so my belief is that the people who are claiming open borders let's say the the intellectual class I'm not talking about the the people who are activist and working with immigrants they just have a self-interest all right so there there are two kinds of open border people there are the the intellectuals and the economists and the philosophers I believe that in private none of them would support open borders they would only support it on an intellectual basis not on a practical basis cuz they wouldn't be able to describe how it could work in our specific case whereas the activists not really they don't really care about the greater good as much as they care about their their activism and about their cause and by the way there's nothing wrong with that that the whole point of activism is people are advocating for their group and we allow activism we allow free speech so I'm not I'm not saying there's anything bad about that but it's not in the interest of the people who might be living here if those activists win and the the borders are thrown open so I would like to um make this challenge if there's a let's say an intellectual as opposed to an activist um who can make an open borders case and would like to come on to a periscope with me I would love to talk to you and maybe you could educate my audience but you have to be maybe somebody who's written on it you know I I don't want just somebody who's got an opinion I want somebody who's put some real skin in the game on this uh on this topic and I think you would watch their idea just fall apart in front of you so I predict nobody's going to take me up on that who who has the right credentials but we'll see and by the way if they have a good argument I'm going to change my mind I know you don't like that but if they have a good argument I'm going to change my mind I'm kind of new to the topic so maybe there's something I haven't thought about all right here here's another topic um we know that foreign companies or foreign yeah companies too but foreign countries like to meddle in other countries elections we know that anytime there is a politician that would do good things for you versus one that would do bad if you have money you're going to try to get that money to the person who's going to help you assuming you're a big entity with a lot of money you're a billionaire or something now what does that predict about the Mexican cartels and uh Democratic candidates and Democratic um elected officials could we not predict with 100% confidence that the cartels have already have or will soon start funly money toward Democrats cuz why wouldn't they right if if you're a Mexican cartel and you got a lot of money and you have lots of mechanisms to feed that money through you know shells and people and and different things wouldn't you identify the the politicians that are closest to the border and wouldn't you find a way to get them money it's hard to believe it's not already happening and I see a number of you are saying it's it's already happening but I don't know any specific cases but whether or not it's it's already happened it's kind of guaranteed isn't it so it seems to me that we've created this super dangerous situation where Democrats and Republicans have this Stark difference on how to deal with the Border it's the Stark difference that opens it up for the cartels cuz the cartels can say whoa we didn't create the Stark difference but now that it's there let's let's have more Stark difference let's start supporting some people who really want to you know open that border or whatever so I would think there's a high likelihood that in the next couple years let's say uh we're going to have a major story of a name brand uh candidate a Democrat who is accepting maybe unwillingly or not unwillingly but maybe unknowingly accepting money from cartels I think that's going to be a future story because and and my argument is not that Democrats are bad and Republicans are good I'm not coming from that position I'm just saying that one of those two parties has a position that the cartels are going to like and people support the politicians that do things they like I don't know what would stop is this from happening all right last night on Tucker Carlson show uh there was a segment on uh the idea of safe needle places that you can get a safe injection if you're an opioid addict and the idea is that if you um if you can move the addicts from getting their drugs on the street where they're going to get the wrong kind of stuff they're going to do overdoses they're going to have unsafe needles and all that if you can get them into a legal um safer environment they're still going to do the drugs cuz you don't have a way to stop that easily but at least they'll do it in a way they don't get overdoses while you're trying to figure out how to deal with it now on Tucker show the I think this was Tucker's point of view and I hope I don't get it wrong I hate I hate to paraphrase other people's opinions because if you lose some Nuance you're not doing anything good for the world but I got the sense when he was talking to I guess Mark Stein that uh both of them were the opinion that this was a bad idea and that we should go stronger at getting people off of drugs and that you know the the energy should be on getting people off of drugs not on making a safe place where it's easy to do them here's a problem with that and I just sent a message I just DMD Tucker on Twitter I don't know if you'll see it or not but um unfortunately I have some experience in this realm as most of you know my uh stepson uh died a few months ago from an fenal overdose and you know we dealt for for years with his teenage addiction and here's what I learned that is a real key variable that did not come up in Tucker's conversation there is no way to get somebody off drugs that's that's the end of it there there is no way nobody has an idea well let me let me make a uh important distinction if an addict has decided to get off drugs and really really wants to and they're they're you know they have you the incentive and they go through processes and they do the right things and they do rehab they can get there but the problem is the ones who don't want to get off it so and that was that was the case with my stepson cuz we and my situation was very similar to he had friends who were in the same situation so we knew the parents of of his friends whose kids were also addicted Etc and the big problem was that they didn't want to stop doing it they liked it and there was nothing you could tell them that would change their minds they would you know they would um they would all prefer to run away from home with no money and no resources because the drugs are so good that if you say to a 16-year-old look you 16-year-old if you keep doing these drugs I'll take away your phone the 16-year-old will say drugs are better than my phone okay you say um I'll take away everything else you have and the 16-year-old will say I still like drugs better we will disown you from the family the 16-year-old will say yeah drugs still better and in fact it's not even close like you're you're not even you're not even in the ballpark yet do you know how good these drugs are all right the reason that these drugs are killing 72,000 people a year just in the United States from overdose is because they're so good that there's nothing you can offer to take away or to give them that comes close to what the drugs are doing it's not even close but here's the real problem in at least in California maybe there's some state where it's different you cannot control another person's body if they don't want to be controlled the exception being prisoners who have you know committed crimes you can put them in jail but if somebody has not committed a crime or let's say has not been commit committed it's not the committing of a crime but they've not been convicted of a crime there is no way anybody including the parents can touch their body and if you can't touch physically you can't hold them you can't handcuff them you can't tie them up if you can't physically stop anybody cuz it's illegal um the kid can just walk stand up and walk walk out the front door there's nothing you can do legally suppose you Tred to physically constrain him well it would get violent whatever but in the end you can't keep a kid handcuff forever as soon as a handcuff comes off they walk out the door now you can commit somebody who's like a danger to themselves you know there's a process where they can be hospitalized for a short time and even tied to a bed and of course you'll find that many many parents of addicts have actually done that they've actually taken their addict kid committed them and they get tied to a bed literally tied to a bed they can't even move their arms and you know they give them all good medical treatment Etc but what does the addict do when the time that that is legal expires they get up they walk out the door and they do drugs why because the drugs are better than their Alternatives they like it it's their choice there's nothing you can do to stop a human being from taking drugs so back to the uh the free needle exchange uh uh thing um when you say I would prefer that we spend our our energy getting them off drugs you have to understand there is no path to that if the if the people wanted to get off drugs they also wouldn't need this needle exchange thing they would be working through a system you know they'd be in rehab they'd be doing what they needed to do if they don't want it you can't make them want it and you can't make them do anything so for those people you only have a choice of essentially addict death or this needle exchange thing which keeps them alive long enough maybe they can come on their own you know on their own they decide life is better you know life with them drugs and most of them won't so I wanted to add that piece of information that if you assume that you can help these people who don't want to be helped you've missed the most important variable in the entire conversation the drugs are better than anything you could take away from them the drugs are better than any penalty that you could give them the drugs are better than their family everything they love the drugs are better all right um let's talk about uh and I'll i' like to end on these climate discussions now you may have noticed that I've I've created a little bit of a kurur fuffle on the internet with my so far at least a little bit balanced discussion of climate because you've never seen a balanced discussion of climate and it makes everybody mad both sides are hating me at the moment because they're like oh you said that one thing about my side but they're both saying it right now so uh apparently I got the attention of Judith Curry who most of of you know as maybe the most prominent um skeptical voice in climate I don't know if she would label herself that way but she doesn't agree with the mainstream and she addressed one of my tweets so I I followed her I didn't realize she was following me on Twitter and um I'm imagining that I might invite her to come on a periscope because she would be a good voice now here's the interesting thing the thing she she responded to as I tweeted that it is literally impossible for a citizen people like me who are not climate scientist to understand the debate and I've been proving this uh every single day so every single day the following thing happens I'll take a climate claim you know doesn't matter what it is the something about ice or seawat or temperatures what whatever the claim is and they'll say here's the claim here's a really credible sounding at least sounding critic and they say that this is all Bs and they show their work so you see the claim and you think well that's pretty convincing it's all the scientists are on the same side and they they all say this then the critic comes in and goes okay here's what they did wrong it's obvious I'm using the same information they are I told you what they did wrong I'm told you how to fix it I'm laying it out here there's nothing hidden look at my work and you can tell clearly that the climate scientists got this wrong and then I look at the skeptic I'm like huh that is very convincing and then this the scientist or somebody who's on the same side as a scientist comes in behind the skeptic and they say ah this skeptic they're always saying crazy stuff here's five other things they said that weren't true and by the way here's why they're wrong in this case too because they did something wrong or they're doing something with the numbers Etc now when the scientist comes back in they are totally credible because I can't I can't judge the scientist I can't judge the the critic and I can't judge the scientist again when they come behind the critic now what happens after the scientist comes back the second time and says the critic was wrong the critic comes back in and the critic says no your objections to my criticism are off base and here's why and then you read them and you say okay those sound like pretty good reasons to Infinity whoever talks last in any narrow topic on climate science you believe whoever just goes last and so Judith Curry was agreeing with my uh general statement that we citizens cannot penetrate the topic I I I would say with certainty now this was a suspicion that has now moved to a certainty in my mind that you cannot do your own homework and get an answer on climate science that it just can't be done and it's because the pingpong between the opinions will be infinite and you'll always always get to a point where you don't understand what they're saying so even if you let's say you start at the top and the claim is something just dead simple sea level is rising too quickly just a dead simple claim critic says no it isn't because this or that scientist comes in and says yes it is you forgot to include this or that by about the fourth iteration they're going to be talking science and you're gone right they're going to be talking about words you haven't heard Concepts you're not aware of contexts you don't fully understand so if you think you can follow that chain to a conclusion and you're not a scientist you know working in this field that is just a hallucination what happens instead and it's quite obvious to me at this point is that people have a bias or they're willing to have a bias I guess and they simply go down the chain of you know no yes no yes no yes no until they're exhausted or they can't find the next reply and when they can't find the next reply they say okay the last person I read that must be the one I don't exactly know what they said or why but that last person who talked was pretty smart so really the people who think that they have good opinions and that they've researched and they've come to their own independent opinion total illusion all they've done is they've come down to the bottom of the chain and they don't know what the next response is or it hasn't happened or they don't understand it there's no thinking going on in the public none no thinking it's it's an illusion that we're giving ourselves based on the fact that we don't have the capability of understanding the argument now what's funny is Judith Curry said she agreed with you know in Broad in a broad way she agreed with the statement that it was hard for the citizens to penetrate the topic and she said this is why you know I put it in simple form and then she connected to a document uh that is just on the question of whether the the sea level is rising in a in a way that's unusual now how many pages do you think her simplification was right so here's somebody agrees with me that the topic is too complicated for the average person so she simplifies it and she sends me a link to it and then I read it 72 pages one question is sea level rising yes or no or I mean is it rising in an unusual way it's the unusual part that's the important part so because apparently the sea levels been rising for a long time 72 pages to answer the question is sea level going up or do we know now I'm pretty smart but I also don't have infinite time so I skimmed it you know I looked at the executive summaries I looked at a few charts and stuff but that 72 pages of simplification were so far above my ability to really judge them for credibility didn't help me at all all right didn't help me at all the other thing that I know for sure is if I took her her document which by the way was completely credible meaning that I looked at it and I thought huh this is a smart person who knows this topic the things they're saying must be easy to check so you wouldn't say something something that was wrong that was just so easy to check right so completely convincing and her her point was that um that we don't have a signal of human involvement so far that we can sort out from the natural variations to know whether CO2 is making the ocean rise so far all right which is different from will it happen in the future but so far but I also know that if I took her 72-page paper and handed it to any scientist who's working in the field es specifically you know ocean sea level stuff in climate science they would look at her paper and they would say well here are all the things she got wrong or the things she didn't consider or why why there's some context that matters or the study that she didn't mention and I would read the new new one and I would say okay that looks pretty good I can't really judge it I'm not a scientist I don't know if any of the claims are true but they sure look good and I'm sure that if I said hey Judith Curry this scientist who has good credentials just said that your 72 Pages has some flaws and it's wrong what would she say do you think there's any she would say oh darn good criticism I changed my paper I changed my mind no there's no chance of that she would tell you with 100% certainty she would go in and say no that scientist got it wrong you know I say in the original paper and he's ignoring what I said and what he's what he's saying has already been debunked by this paper so I'm actually right after all Etc forever the scientist would disagree she would disagree you cannot penetrate this topic here are the current outstanding questions which if uh about climate and if anybody has anything to add to this I would love to see it I think I called for this on Twitter already but I haven't seen it so there's a skeptical notion that the CO2 does affect temperature but that its effect uh tapers off meaning that the first amounts of CO2 do affect temperature but it's it's starts to make less and less of a difference the more CO2 there is that seems like maybe the simplest thing that you could test do you think even that simple question we could look at what the scientists say and then look at what the Skeptics say and again you know how each of them respond to each other do you think we could even find out the answer to that simple question I don't think so and it it's the basic question that's driving this entire thing no I don't think we can um well let me put it this way I'm not claiming that science doesn't know the answer I'm claiming that we non-scientists will never know if science knows the answer we could know maybe how many people are on each side but when we look at the arguments we're helpless we we can't judge the arguments um and so I I hear some of you flailing around uh in in your own hallucinations so so here's somebody who's hallucinating and you can tell from the comments somebody said uh CO2 think of it as a tiny oscillation and it can only absorb so much right if you believe whoever said that comment if you believe you have a grasp on this topic I guarantee you you're hallucinating CU you do not if I put you in a room with a bunch of climate scientists do you think they would say oh Bob we didn't think of this tiny oscillating thing nobody had mentioned before the idea that CO2 might have a maximum and and you know might might be saturated this is the first time we've ever heard that argument do you think that's going to happen no they're going to tell you why you're you're full of baloney and then you're going to find a skeptic who says why they're full of baloney Etc forever you cannot penetrate this topic all right um that's enough on that let us uh we might need to double back when the president does his speech because it's going to be fun time I'm so interested to see what he says about all this um oh can I end with a little story it's about the simulation so well I'm going to tell this story another time I'm going to end here for today and I will talk to you maybe this afternoon I'm not sure talk to you tomorrow at least bye for now

[Music]

hey everybody come on in here it's the

morning but don't let that stop you from

having a good time because some of us

are mour people the rest of you well I

hope you do as well as you could and one

of the ways that you can catch up to the

morning people is with a little thing I

call Coffee and it's time for coffee

with Scott Adams I'm Scott Adams your

host and I'm about to enjoy the

simultaneous sip with many of you those

of you who are

prepared please raise your mug your

glass your container your chalice your

Stein your cup put it put your favorite

liquid in there I like

coffee and join me now for the

simultaneous hip

ah so many fun things in the

news let's start with

BuzzFeed now uh I like to remind you

what my prediction record

is now this isn't quite a prediction but

I want to remind you that when the

BuzzFeed story first broke that Michael

Cohen had said blah blah blah it doesn't

matter what he said because it wasn't

true or at least it's Fallen

apart and and when I talked about it on

Periscope was it

yesterday I stressed to you that

BuzzFeed is

not is not a uh credible Source did I

not did I not stress several times

remember it's BuzzFeed they're not a

credible source and then by today we

find out the whole story is Fallen apart

and I was just watching a fascinating

clip on

CNN it was Anderson Cooper talking to

Jeffrey tubin and I forget who El

and they were taking it pretty hard

because the the mainstream media ran

with that story with a lot of if it's

true but if it's true and if this is

true there's big stories uh but to their

credit and I like I like to give credit

where credit is due the uh Jeffrey tubin

and uh especially he said you know make

no mistake about this this is just a bad

day for the

media yeah Brian Brian stelter that's

right he was the third person there and

I think all of them realized and yeah

Maggie hman was there too and I think

all of them

realized

that uh the media has a big big big

credibility problem and it got a lot

worse yesterday

yesterday but again remember I told you

from the jump this is not a credible

source so I'm going to take a little bit

of credit for calling out the

unreliability of the story from from the

jump okay now why did I think it was not

a credible Story number one the authors

have a little sketchy past number two

it's BuzzFeed that does not necessarily

uh work with the facts all the time and

number three it fit perfectly with The

Narrative of the side that was reporting

it oh surprise number four nobody else

could confirm it right away number five

it was a Muller leak are there Muller

leaks remember what I said if if

somebody has a source in the Muller

organization that would give them that

kind of detailed leak remember what I

said they would also

know what the general outcome of the the

Muller investigation is going to be

anybody who has a a source that good who

was going to give up something that

private would have given up more and by

now by now BuzzFeed would be reporting

on basically the result of the uh of the

whole thing and of course they're not

and so that was another red flag and

then of course the whole fact that it

was an anonymous source so you've got

anonymous

source fits their narrative perfectly

nobody else can confirm it it's BuzzFeed

who is unreliable the authors are

unreliable if you didn't see this one

coming you can't see anything coming cuz

this one was broadcasting from a long

way around hey fake news coming we got

some fake news coming but a lot of

people wanted to believe it all right

that's enough on that um You probably

noted that a lot of people got the

talking points about the Pelosi flight

to Afghanistan being uh canceled at the

last minute by President Trump and the

standard reaction was it's childish it's

childish like a fifth grader it's such a

childish thing to do I don't think that

worked as well as they hoped it

would because

it was also reported

simultaneously that it was a tip for

Tat but it was a tip for Tat for

something childish which was postponing

the uh uh the State of the Union so who

could possibly listen to the Democrats

saying that the the tit fortat

response was childish but not the

original you know who started it now

like most of us I think we're watching

this as entertainment right we're

watching it as an entertainment show it

it was sort of the perfect reality TV

response to the reality TV you know

provocation which is the cancellation of

the uh of the of the whole deal

now do you remember that I told you um I

don't know how long ago I said that the

kill shot for Nancy Pelosi's statement

that the wall is

immoral what did I tell you the kill

shot would that would be the persuasion

Kill Shot does anybody remember it cuz I

like that I like to ask you cuz in case

anybody is coming into this late they

can you know get some confirmation that

that I'm predicting things ahead of

time um now the engineering question is

we'll talk about that separately so

that's a different that's a different

kill shot I'm talking about specifically

the question of whether a wall is moral

or immoral what did I tell was the best

response to that well let me remind you

since it doesn't look like anybody's

going to get the right

answer um I told you that the kill shot

was to start asking other

Democrats to defend to defend the

statement that some walls are moral and

some are

not and what did you say you saw the

media start to ask the other Democrats

do you agree that this wall is immoral

because it's a completely unsupportable

concept now Pelosi could probably get

away with it because Pelosi is an

advocate right so when you see that the

head of the party you know so or you

know one of the leaders of the party

when you see them say something crazy

you say to yourself well their job is

Advocate you know Nancy P's job is not

fair and balanced presentation right so

you can't really hold it against her to

say something that outrageous it's

something the president would have done

it's it's something that somebody who's

a leader and an advocate does but the

problem is she created a standard that

the people below her who are just many

of them who are actually just trying to

do their

job they're going to have to defend this

ridiculous standard that there's such a

thing as a moral versus an immoral kind

of barrier when all of these people have

voted for barriers of this type in the

past so you saw people asking about it

and that whole moral immoral thing has

just started to

I don't know rot you know it didn't go

away it just started to rot from within

like it it just doesn't stand the test

of time at all you put a little sunlight

on it it's like it's like an old vampire

it's starting to

crumble

anyway so uh the president apparently

has a speech

today at I guess 300 p.m. eastern time

in which he's going to offer reportedly

you know any Anything could happen

between now and the time the president

goes on the air but reportedly the

president's going to make some kind of

an offer to to have something for both

sides to chew on now here's a um here's

a rule of negotiating and if you've

never heard this rule it's a really

important one but it's not common sense

so this is a non-common sense really

smart rule about

negotiating you don't quote negotiate

with yourself

unquote let me tell you what that means

what that means is let's say you and I

are negotiating and I come to you and

say I will give you a million dollar for

whatever it is you're selling and we're

negotiating if you say no that's that's

no

good what you don't do if you've been

rebuffed for your first offer is make a

second offer that's called negotiating

with yourself cuz you're the one who

offered a million and now you're the one

making the next offer which is lower

that that's referred to as negotiating

with yourself it's a classic mistake

that people who don't negotiate make

you've watched that the president is

very good at not doing that right it's a

it's a it's a rock bottom basic most

important thing you can do you never

make a offer and then just make another

offer you you just don't do that it's

it's bad persuasion bad

negotiating so you've noticed that the

Democrats haven't really made an offer

not really right because they've said

how about nothing how about immoral and

the the immoral response isn't really a

counter offer is it it's more of like

we're not going to talk about it we're

not negotiating now the mistake would be

that Pelosi would Trav the president

into negotiating with himself and if he

were

not the master Persuader that I believe

he is he would be going on television

tonight and negotiating with himself in

other words she's creating a situation

because the thing to keep in mind here

we always have to keep this in mind is

that Pelosi is pretty damn good at what

she does right she knows this space

whatever else you want to say about her

she's got an aame and she brought it and

she was trapping the president into

negotiating with himself which is weak

and

stupid the president is now going to

give a give a speech in which he's

alleged to be making a second offer or

or at least you know a new offer that we

haven't seen

before that could be

construed as negotiating with

himself if that's what's going to happen

so let me make uh one suggestion and I'm

not I'm not going to predict that this

the president will do this but it but

it's by way of making my point suppose

the president went on on the air and

made the following offer and he said

this I will reopen the

government when the Democrats give me

their plan for the Border in in a way

that has a budget and shows exactly what

they plan to do and where

H because this is not ask this is not

negotiating like I've just decided to go

down on my price it's a specific offer

that the public will understand as

reasonable so imagine this the President

says we all want to open the government

I will open the government if all you do

is show me your plan and then we will

negotiate from that plan we will start

with your plan and then we'll show it to

the people we'll have border patrol look

at it and then we'll see how different

is your plan from ours now the key to

this is that there was never much

difference in what the left and the

right actually wanted right nothing I

said would make sense if you knew you

were really far apart cuz if you were

really far apart they would just say oh

okay how about something way over here

and then then you wouldn't be anywhere

right but because we know they're close

and especially the the rank and file

Democrats are like yeah we like border

security we just want to do it in the

smartest most humane way now who among

you disagrees with that statement so

here's the Democrat position on border

security yes we want good border

security we want to do it in the

smartest most economical and humane

way who disagrees with that who

disagrees with that nobody right so when

you force them to actually put some meat

on their proposal and you offer that

you'll open the government if they do it

what what voter is going to look at that

offer and say well that's just playing

games who is going to say that's an

unfair offer who is going to say that

the Democrats should sit tight and not

even say what they

want while 800,000 people are eating

tree bark cuz they can't afford to buy

food all right who thinks that wouldn't

work cuz you know it would all right it

would put all of the pressure on the

Democrats if they brought a plan it

would reveal it would reveal the

basically the bad I'd say the bad will

behind everything they're doing at the

moment which is they're not that far off

from what everybody else wants now to

their credit and I'm going to give the

Democrats a very big compliment right

now to their credit they have killed the

wall I I think that even Republicans at

this point because we've all learned

more you know there's something about

this process that's very educational you

know on day one when the president said

build a wall across the whole thing

solves all these problems I have to

admit I thought to myself I don't know

why not why wouldn't you have a wall you

know I'd have to look at the details but

seems reasonable on the surface right

but the further you dig into this and

the more reasonable people get involved

you realize that walls make sense in

specific areas and they simply don't

make sense economically or on any other

level in other areas and that if the

engineers get involved and the experts

they'll tell you where to put a wall El

Paso is a perfect place cuz when you're

separating you know water and El Paso I

think those are the two places they're

both populated areas and you need to

slow people down pretty severely because

otherwise they disappear into the other

populated area but if you got a big

empty space and you can see the whole

thing with a drone or from Towers or you

could put some electronic sensors there

if anybody tries to cross you just send

out your border patrol and they just

pick them up right so there's nobody

here who disagrees with the general

concept

that the engineers and the experts

should make the decision we want a

solution that's Humane but it also has

to work you know who has that plan

probably Democrats do you know how

similar that would look to the

Republican plan probably not that

different by the time it's done but it

would give everybody a reason to move

forward so that's so again it's that's

not my that's not my prediction of what

the president will do I will say with

some confidence it would be the best

thing to do I'm I'm completely confident

about that part um but here's what to

watch for watch for the president

avoiding the problem of negotiating with

himself one way or another that's his

biggest challenge right at the end of

this nobody you the president can't have

a win and can't even have like a good

path forward if at the end of this the

enemy is saying well it looks like they

tricked him into negotiating with

himself he's not much of a negotiator is

he so it could be that all he's going to

do is throw some variables into the mix

so he might say here's here are the

other variables here's how we want to

approve workers here's what I want to do

with H1B visas here's what I want to do

with you know path to citizenship and

DACA and all that stuff so I might be

that he's just adding variables now that

would not be a case of negotiating with

yourself because I've often said if you

have if you have an

impass often times the only way you can

get past an impass is by adding

variables you need you need extra stuff

to to make a deal so he may just be

adding extra stuff and that would be

perfectly fine would not be a case of

negotiating with himself per se because

he probably wouldn't offer anything that

hasn't already been on the table

before all

right um here's an update on the

question of open

borders so there was yet another article

in the New York Times uh by someone who

said yeah let's let's think about open

borders you know because they're

economic benefits and I want to give you

just a a little bit of a tour you know a

very short one of open borders now there

are people who argue and they have good

economic arguments so on a conceptual

level just a conceptual level not a

practical level but on a conceptual

level open borders actually make

sense wait for the Practical part before

you throw up in your mouth okay if

you're just if it's just a thought

experiment and you're saying well in a

perfect world open borders because the

argument is the free flow of uh labor

and everything else is just always good

basically it's an argument for

capitalism and freedom and whenever you

have better capitalism and better

freedom you almost always get a good

result right so on a conceptual level

open

borders totally

conceptually reasonable thing

unfortunately we don't live in a

conceptual world we we have to survive

in the real world and in the so he says

my God man have you gone

insane wait wait to the second part all

right you must be new here wait to the

second part

and the in the real

world the countries that are next to you

are not uh equal on all variables their

economy could be in the toilet they

could have more crime for example I'm

not saying that's the case but there

could be a terrorism risk some people

have a terrorism risk some don't maybe

the other countries have uh loose

requirements about who gets into their

country which would you know be a

pathway for anybody else to get into the

country

[Music]

so um and then the biggest variable is

if there's a country that has um lots of

Social Services let's say free health

care um your retirement whatever else

and they're next to a country that

doesn't how's that work out wouldn't

wouldn't all the people in the country

that doesn't give them free stuff stand

up and start walking toward the country

that does you wouldn't wouldn't

uh you know right now the number of

people who come in from Mexico is is

putting you know some people think a

burden on the employment of the the

citizens uh

and that's with all the effort we can

put into reducing the number coming in

what would happen if that

number what happens if it's 20 million

people a

year where where do they live do they

live on the street do they make camps on

the roads what you know did do they

clean up after themselves you know from

a practical

perspective um the here let me put it

another way open

borders probably is a really good

solution for countries that are largely

similar the more similar the countries

the more open borders makes perfect

sense because let's say you know your

your France and Germany or something and

I don't know if this is the case but

let's say that they have similar social

services and let's say they're both

similar targets for Terror attacks and

anything else well it kind of doesn't

matter that much right the terrorists

are already in one of the countries and

they're happy to attack that one maybe

there'll be a little more in your

country but you know you probably had

the same risk anyway you know

so so when you see the open borders

people here and here's my

statement um that I think is just my

opinion alone I don't know anybody else

who has this specific opinion but my

belief is that the people who talk about

open

borders literally don't mean

it and other words if if you put a

camera on them and say do you believe in

open borders they say yes and here here

are all my arguments but I believe if I

took that same person off camera in

private and I said look I hear what

you're saying you know on a conceptual

level it does make sense to remove

friction that's good for everything but

in a real

world you know in a practical world tell

me how this looks to you what would keep

50 million people from just entering the

United States and what would the United

States look like if 50 million people

came here and said give me some health

care or give me some whatever

so my belief is

that the people who are claiming open

borders let's say the the intellectual

class I'm not talking about the the

people who are activist and working with

immigrants they just have a

self-interest all right so there there

are two kinds of open border people

there are the the intellectuals and the

economists and the philosophers I

believe that in private none of them

would support open borders they would

only support it on an intellectual basis

not on a practical basis cuz they

wouldn't be able to describe how it

could work in our specific case whereas

the activists not really they don't

really care about the greater good as

much as they care about their their

activism and about their cause and by

the way there's nothing wrong with that

that the whole point of activism is

people are advocating for their group

and we allow activism we allow free

speech so I'm not I'm not saying there's

anything bad about that but it's not in

the interest of the people who might be

living here if those activists win and

the the borders are thrown open so I

would like to um make this challenge if

there's a let's say an

intellectual as opposed to an activist

um who can make an open borders case and

would like to come on to a periscope

with me I would love to talk to you and

maybe you could educate my audience but

you have to be maybe somebody who's

written on it you know I I don't want

just somebody who's got an opinion I

want somebody who's put some real skin

in the game on this uh on this topic and

I think you would watch their idea just

fall apart in front of you so I predict

nobody's going to take me up on that who

who has the right credentials but we'll

see and by the way if they have a good

argument I'm going to change my mind I

know you don't like that but if they

have a good argument I'm going to change

my mind I'm kind of new to the topic so

maybe there's something I haven't

thought about all right here here's

another topic

um we know that foreign companies or

foreign yeah companies too but foreign

countries like to meddle in other

countries elections we know that anytime

there is a politician that would do good

things for you versus one that would do

bad if you have money you're going to

try to get that money to the person

who's going to help you assuming you're

a big entity with a lot of money you're

a billionaire or something now what does

that

predict about the Mexican

cartels and uh

Democratic candidates and Democratic um

elected

officials could we not predict with 100%

confidence that the cartels have already

have or will soon start funly money

toward

Democrats cuz why wouldn't they right if

if you're a Mexican cartel and you got a

lot of money and you have lots of

mechanisms to feed that money through

you know shells and people and and

different things wouldn't you identify

the the politicians that are closest to

the border and wouldn't you find a way

to get them

money it's hard to believe it's not

already

happening and I see a number of you are

saying it's it's already happening but I

don't know any specific cases but

whether or not it's it's already

happened it's kind of guaranteed isn't

it so it seems to me that we've created

this super dangerous situation where

Democrats and Republicans have this

Stark difference on how to deal with the

Border it's the Stark difference that

opens it up for the cartels cuz the

cartels can say whoa we didn't create

the Stark difference but now that it's

there let's let's have more Stark

difference let's start supporting some

people who really want to you know open

that border or whatever

so I would think there's a high

likelihood that in the next couple years

let's say uh we're going to have a major

story of a name brand uh candidate a

Democrat who is accepting maybe

unwillingly or not unwillingly but maybe

unknowingly accepting money from cartels

I think that's going to be a future

story because and and my argument is not

that Democrats are bad and Republicans

are good I'm not coming from that

position I'm just saying that one of

those two parties has a position that

the cartels are going to

like and people support the politicians

that do things they like I don't know

what would stop is this from

happening all right last night on Tucker

Carlson show uh there was a segment on

uh the idea of safe needle places that

you can get a safe injection if you're

an opioid addict and the idea is that if

you um if you can move the addicts from

getting their drugs on the street where

they're going to get the wrong kind of

stuff they're going to do overdoses

they're going to have unsafe needles and

all that if you can get them into a

legal um safer environment they're still

going to do the drugs cuz you don't have

a way to stop that easily but at least

they'll do it in a way they don't get

overdoses while you're trying to figure

out how to deal with it

now on Tucker show the I think this was

Tucker's point of view and I hope I

don't get it wrong I hate I hate to

paraphrase other people's opinions

because if you lose some Nuance you're

not doing anything good for the world

but I got the sense when he was talking

to I guess Mark Stein that uh both of

them were the opinion that this was a

bad idea and that we should go stronger

at getting people off of drugs and that

you know the

the energy should be on getting people

off of drugs not on making a safe place

where it's easy to do them here's a

problem with that and I just sent a

message I just DMD Tucker on Twitter I

don't know if you'll see it or not but

um unfortunately I have some experience

in this realm as most of you know my uh

stepson uh died a few months ago from an

fenal overdose and you know we dealt for

for years with his teenage addiction and

here's what I learned that is a real key

variable that did not come up in

Tucker's

conversation there is no way to get

somebody off

drugs that's that's the end of it there

there is no way nobody has an

idea well let me let me make a uh

important

distinction if an addict has decided to

get off drugs and really really wants to

and they're they're you know they have

you the incentive and they go through

processes and they do the right things

and they do rehab they can get there but

the problem is the ones who don't want

to get off it so and that was that was

the case with my stepson cuz

we and my situation was very similar to

he had friends who were in the same

situation so we knew the parents of of

his friends whose kids were also

addicted Etc and the big problem was

that they didn't want to stop doing it

they liked it and there was nothing you

could tell them that would change their

minds they would you know they would um

they would all prefer to run away from

home with no money and no resources

because the drugs are so good that if

you say to a 16-year-old look you

16-year-old if you keep doing these

drugs I'll take away your phone the

16-year-old will say drugs are better

than my phone okay you say um I'll take

away everything else you have and the

16-year-old will say I still like drugs

better we will disown you from the

family the 16-year-old will say yeah

drugs still better and in fact it's not

even close like you're you're not even

you're not even in the ballpark yet do

you know how good these drugs are all

right the reason that these drugs are

killing 72,000 people a year just in the

United States from overdose is because

they're so good

that there's nothing you can offer to

take away or to give them that comes

close to what the drugs are doing it's

not even

close but here's the real problem in at

least in California maybe there's some

state where it's different you cannot

control another person's body if they

don't want to be controlled the

exception being prisoners who have you

know committed crimes you can put them

in jail but if somebody has not

committed a crime or let's say has not

been commit committed it's not the

committing of a crime but they've not

been convicted of a crime there is no

way anybody including the parents can

touch their body and if you can't touch

physically you can't hold them you can't

handcuff them you can't tie them up if

you can't physically stop anybody cuz

it's

illegal um the kid can just walk stand

up and walk walk out the front door

there's nothing you can do legally

suppose you Tred to physically constrain

him well it would get violent whatever

but in the end you can't keep a kid

handcuff forever as soon as a handcuff

comes off they walk out the door now you

can commit somebody who's like a danger

to themselves you know there's a process

where they can be hospitalized for a

short time and even tied to a bed and of

course you'll find that many many

parents of addicts have actually done

that they've actually taken their addict

kid committed them and they get tied to

a bed literally tied to a bed they can't

even move their arms and you know they

give them all good medical treatment Etc

but what does the addict do when the

time that that is legal

expires they get up they walk out the

door and they do drugs why because the

drugs are better than their Alternatives

they like it it's their choice

there's nothing you can do to stop a

human being from taking drugs so back to

the uh the free needle exchange uh uh

thing

um when you say I would prefer that we

spend our our energy getting them off

drugs you have to understand there is no

path to that if the if the people wanted

to get off drugs they also wouldn't need

this needle exchange thing they would be

working through a system you know they'd

be in rehab they'd be doing what they

needed to do if they don't want it you

can't make them want it and you can't

make them do anything so for those

people you only have a choice of

essentially addict

death or this needle exchange thing

which keeps them alive long enough maybe

they can come on their own you know on

their own they decide life is better you

know life with them drugs and most of

them won't so I wanted to add that piece

of information that if you assume that

you can help these people who don't want

to be helped you've missed the most

important variable in the entire

conversation the drugs are better than

anything you could take away from them

the drugs are better than any penalty

that you could give them the drugs are

better than their family everything they

love the drugs are

better all right um let's talk

about uh and I'll i' like to end on

these climate discussions now you may

have noticed that I've I've created a

little bit of a kurur fuffle on the

internet with my so far at least a

little bit balanced discussion of

climate because you've never seen a

balanced discussion of climate and it

makes everybody mad both sides are

hating me at the moment because they're

like oh you said that one thing about my

side but they're both saying it right

now so uh apparently I got the attention

of Judith Curry who most of of you know

as maybe the most prominent um skeptical

voice in climate I don't know if she

would label herself that way but she

doesn't agree with the

mainstream and she addressed one of my

tweets so I I followed her I didn't

realize she was following me on Twitter

and

um I'm imagining that I might invite her

to come on a periscope because she would

be a good voice now here's the

interesting thing the thing she she

responded to as I tweeted that it is

literally impossible for a citizen

people like me who are not climate

scientist to understand the debate and

I've been proving this uh every single

day so every single day the following

thing happens I'll take a climate claim

you know doesn't matter what it is the

something about ice or seawat or

temperatures what whatever the claim is

and they'll say here's the claim here's

a really credible sounding at least

sounding critic and they say that this

is all Bs and they show their work so

you see the claim and you think well

that's pretty convincing it's all the

scientists are on the same side and they

they all say this then the critic comes

in and goes okay here's what they did

wrong it's obvious I'm using the same

information they are I told you what

they did wrong I'm told you how to fix

it I'm laying it out here there's

nothing hidden look at my work and you

can tell clearly that the climate

scientists got this wrong

and then I look at the skeptic I'm like

huh that is very

convincing and then this the scientist

or somebody who's on the same side as a

scientist comes in behind the skeptic

and they say ah this skeptic they're

always saying crazy stuff here's five

other things they said that weren't true

and by the way here's why they're wrong

in this case too because they did

something wrong or they're doing

something with the numbers Etc now when

the scientist comes back in they are

totally credible because I can't I can't

judge the scientist I can't judge the

the critic and I can't judge the

scientist again when they come behind

the critic now what happens after the

scientist comes back the second time and

says the critic was wrong the critic

comes back in and the critic says no

your objections to my criticism are off

base and here's why and then you read

them and you say okay those sound like

pretty good

reasons to Infinity

whoever talks last in any narrow topic

on climate science you believe whoever

just goes last and so Judith Curry was

agreeing with my uh general statement

that we citizens cannot penetrate the

topic I I I would say with certainty now

this was a suspicion that has now moved

to a certainty in my mind that you

cannot do your own homework and get an

answer on climate science that it just

can't be done and it's because the

pingpong between the opinions will be

infinite and you'll always always get to

a point where you don't understand what

they're saying so even if you let's say

you start at the top and the claim is

something just dead simple sea level is

rising too quickly just a dead simple

claim critic says no it isn't because

this or that scientist comes in and says

yes it is you forgot to include this or

that by about the fourth iteration

they're going to be talking science and

you're gone right they're going to be

talking about words you haven't heard

Concepts you're not aware of contexts

you don't fully understand so if you

think you can follow that chain to a

conclusion and you're not a scientist

you know working in this field that is

just a

hallucination what happens instead and

it's quite obvious to me at this point

is that people have a bias or they're

willing to have a bias I guess and they

simply go down the chain of you know no

yes no yes no yes no until they're

exhausted or they can't find the next

reply and when they can't find the next

reply they say okay the last person I

read that must be the one I don't

exactly know what they said or why but

that last person who talked was pretty

smart so really the people who think

that they have good opinions and that

they've researched and they've come to

their own independent opinion total

illusion all they've done is they've

come down to the bottom of the chain and

they don't know what the next response

is or it hasn't happened or they don't

understand it there's no thinking going

on in the public none no thinking it's

it's an illusion that we're giving

ourselves based on the fact that we

don't have the capability of

understanding the argument now what's

funny is Judith Curry said she agreed

with you know in Broad in a broad way

she agreed with the statement that it

was hard for the citizens to penetrate

the topic and she said this is why you

know I put it in simple form and then

she connected to a document uh that is

just on the question of whether the the

sea level is rising in a in a way that's

unusual now how many pages do you think

her simplification was right so here's

somebody agrees with me that the topic

is too complicated for the average

person so she simplifies it and she

sends me a link to it and then I read it

72

pages one question is sea level rising

yes or no or I mean is it rising in an

unusual way it's the unusual part that's

the important part so because apparently

the sea levels been rising for a long

time 72 pages

to answer the question is sea level

going up or do we

know now I'm pretty

smart but I also don't have infinite

time so I skimmed it you know I looked

at the executive summaries I looked at a

few charts and stuff but that 72 pages

of simplification were so far above my

ability to really judge them for

credibility didn't help me at all all

right didn't help me at all the other

thing that I know for sure is if I took

her her document which by the way was

completely credible meaning that I

looked at it and I thought huh this is a

smart person who knows this topic the

things they're saying must be easy to

check so you wouldn't say something

something that was wrong that was just

so easy to check right so completely

convincing and her her point was that um

that we don't have a signal of human

involvement so far that we can sort out

from the natural variations to know

whether CO2 is making the ocean rise so

far all right which is different from

will it happen in the future but so

far but I also know that if I took her

72-page paper and handed it to any

scientist who's working in the field es

specifically you know ocean sea level

stuff in climate science they would look

at her paper and they would say well

here are all the things she got wrong or

the things she didn't consider or why

why there's some context that matters or

the study that she didn't mention and I

would read the new new one and I would

say okay that looks pretty good I can't

really judge it I'm not a scientist I

don't know if any of the claims are true

but they sure look good and I'm sure

that if I said hey Judith Curry this

scientist who has good credentials just

said that your 72 Pages has some flaws

and it's wrong what would she say do you

think there's any she would say oh

darn good criticism I changed my paper I

changed my mind no there's no chance of

that she would tell you with 100%

certainty she would go in and say no

that scientist got it wrong you know I

say in the original paper and he's

ignoring what I said and what he's what

he's saying has already been debunked by

this paper so I'm actually right after

all Etc forever the scientist would

disagree she would disagree you cannot

penetrate this

topic here are the current outstanding

questions which if uh about climate and

if anybody has anything to add to this I

would love to see it I think I called

for this on Twitter already but I

haven't seen it so there's a skeptical

notion that the CO2 does affect

temperature but that its effect uh

tapers off meaning that the first

amounts of CO2 do affect temperature but

it's it's starts to make less and less

of a difference the more CO2 there is

that seems like maybe the simplest thing

that you could test do you think even

that simple question we could look at

what the scientists say and then look at

what the Skeptics say and again you know

how each of them respond to each other

do you think we could even find out the

answer to that simple

question I don't think so and it it's

the basic question that's driving this

entire thing

no I don't think we can um well let me

put it this way I'm not claiming that

science doesn't know the answer I'm

claiming that we non-scientists will

never know if science knows the answer

we could know maybe how many people are

on each side but when we look at the

arguments we're helpless we we can't

judge the

arguments um and so I I hear some of you

flailing around uh in in your own

hallucinations so so here's somebody

who's hallucinating and you can tell

from the comments somebody said uh CO2

think of it as a tiny oscillation and it

can only absorb so much

right if you believe whoever said that

comment if you believe you have a grasp

on this topic I guarantee you you're

hallucinating CU you do not if I put you

in a room with a bunch of climate

scientists do you think they would say

oh Bob we didn't think of this tiny

oscillating thing nobody had mentioned

before the idea that CO2 might have a

maximum and and you know might might be

saturated this is the first time we've

ever heard that argument do you think

that's going to happen no they're going

to tell you why you're you're full of

baloney and then you're going to find a

skeptic who says why they're full of

baloney Etc forever you cannot penetrate

this topic all right

um that's enough on that let us uh we

might need to double back when the

president does his speech because it's

going to be fun time I'm so interested

to see what he says about all this um oh

can I end with a little

story it's about the

simulation so well I'm going to tell

this story another time I'm going to end

here for today and I will talk to you

maybe this afternoon I'm not sure talk

to you

tomorrow at least bye for now