Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 22, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas

Context —

w was going to happen for the most part. And if you don't know what's going to happen, it's chaos. So just putting a clever word on it and labeling it doesn't change the fact that the world is unpredictable all the time. Do you think you could hire or elect a president who would make the chaos go away? I hope not, because if the chaos goes away we're all dead. The only way you could have no chaos…

← Previous segment →

break it, is this something that would cause maybe a predictable problem if I go this way versus that. It's a risk management situation. A lot of it is guessing. A lot of it's intuition.

So anybody who is operating at the child level that says that a candidate is bringing chaos when in fact chaos is the canvas, they're not really a good observer.

I've noticed this correlation anecdotally and I want to see if you can notice it. As I've famously called out the Democrats who come after me on Twitter, if they say completely irrational things and I check their profile they're usually artists of some kind. And you can tell they're an artist because their comments depart from rational thought so grotesquely. But there's another category because not all Democrats and not all critics of Trump are artists. Some of them have jobs where they've learned critical thinking.

What do the people who have actually learned critical thinking — let's say you're an economist, your lawyers, your business people, there are lots of other jobs but ones who actually have skill and experience and critical thinking and risk management — what do they say when they come after me? I will give you an example. Sure, Dilbert. Or well that's from the cartoonist. That's it. They just do sarcasm as if that says everything that needs to be said. Well there's the cartoonist. Nothing else needs to be said.

And I want you to see if you find that correlation. So check profiles when somebody comes at you with nothing but sarcasm and see if this pattern holds. I don't know if it will but it might. Just see if the critical thinkers use sarcasm and the artists try to use logic but it's not working for them.

All right. There's — I guess Rand Paul has called for the subpoena of Antifa's plane records and hotel records and travel and stuff to find out who's funding Antifa. And I think that's everything. It feels to me — it's too early to know but it feels to me that if we find out who's funding at least the primary agitators that you know get everybody else going, it only takes a small number of people to get the rest of the crowd going in some direction.

So just for clarification, nobody believes that all of Antifa are being paid to be there. There are no conservatives who believe that. No Republicans. Nobody on Twitter. Nobody's ever suggested that all the BLM or all of the Antifa or even most are being paid to be there. Clearly not the case. The assertion is, the allegation if you will, that there is a high likelihood based on evidence, a high likelihood that some number of them, some kernel of them, small kernel, are paid professional agitators. And it would be good to know who's paying them because they might be the ones who are driving the animal spirits of the rest.

So Rand Paul continues to be one of the most productive members of Congress, seemingly being the only person who's willing to do useful things on a regular basis. I don't know what to say about this. Like how many times have I told you there was a good thing happening and then the name attached to it was Rand Paul? It's a fairly common event. And I say to myself, aren't there a lot of other people in Congress? Like why is it all the smart stuff comes from just a handful of people? It's pretty consistent.

So Nancy Pelosi's got some political trouble. She was caught on security camera indoors getting her hair blown out, some kind of a wash and a blow for her hair. Now I guess the shop was closed to other people but she was in the shop and she had her mask off and so she got a lot of pushback from that. I guess her response was that she didn't know it was wrong.

Now here's my opinion about that. Don't care at all. I don't care even a little bit that Nancy Pelosi was indoors when other people are not allowed indoors because it's against the rules. And I don't mind that she didn't have her mask on when she was getting this particular treatment. By the way, a lot of personal services such as massages, it's not that uncommon for the provider to have a mask, as in Nancy's case, but the person receiving the service to not have a mask depending on what the service is. For example, but in most cases when you could wear a mask it's recommended.

Now the reason I'm not going to climb all over Pelosi for what is being called the massive hypocrisy is not because it isn't. It is. It's massive hypocrisy. But it's also not important. And I would like to establish the belief that the leaders of our country should not be treated like the res

Context —

t of us. I don't think that's wrong. I believe that Nancy Pelosi should be able to get her hair done indoors because she's the Speaker of the House and you know there are things that you can't do on the sidewalk if you're the Speaker of the House. Now if everybody else was on the sidewalk, they're anonymous people walk by, that's fine, it's safe, it's good enough. But if you're the president of t…

Next segment → →