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

Context —

wasn't answering the question because he doesn't want to say yes, but also because he didn't want to say no. They both would be bad for him politically. So Aaron Rupar's, I guess I'll call it an opinion, that good reading comprehension would suggest that his avoiding of the question is a pretty strong signal of which way he would go. And on that I would say that's a fair opinion, but it needs to b…

← Previous segment →

ned up, so we'll take this path. So maybe he thought of this the whole time and that was the track. Or maybe not. I don't know.

And then my last line of notes seems to be something that was left on the printer that has no application to anything we're talking about whatsoever. And so ladies and gentlemen, even though I was late today, super late, I think I delivered the best livestream you've ever seen in your whole damn life. What's the matter? Oh, okay. All right.

So I'm seeing lots of memes go by. The sip was a bit rushed. You're right. Printers are my worst enemies. The Dutch farmers. I don't know. Is there much to that story? They're protesting. They're not happy. Oh, tell us the joke. Remind me what was the joke. I wasn't going to tell you. Oh, I know. It was the offensive joke over here. All right. All right.

That's all for now. Oh, about Boebert. All right. Well, I'm going to tell the Locals people what I was going to say and that's all. Who is a pedophile? I don't know. The Uganda gold story. I don't know. What's that? So there are farmers revolting in more places. Dutch farmers are trying to avoid a Sri Lanka situation. Is that what they're doing? All right. Uganda found as much gold underground as there is in the entire world. Well, that's a good story. I'm going to go catch up on that. I didn't see that in the headlines today. Not true.

All right. So here's another story that I somehow skipped over. This is older data. It's like seven years old, but it probably hasn't changed that much. 29 percent of adult women are taking drugs to help with mental illness or mental health. 29 percent. That was seven years ago. So do you believe that number? But here's the problem. If 29 percent are taking a drug for their mental health, how many of them should be taking a drug and are not? Because there's no way that 100 percent of the people who have mental health problems are taking drugs, right? It might be half. The other half don't know that a drug could help or they're too degraded to get their own help or they think they're fine or they don't have health insurance so they don't have time. But I feel like it's close to 50 percent would either have a mental health problem or need it.

Now actually let me ask this. I'm going to ask you the two most sexist questions you've ever seen in your life. And this will show me how much of a terrible, terrible person you are. I'm going to ask you first for women and then for men. Now forget about what drugs people are taking. So the following questions are not about drugs. They're about what percentage of men and what percentage of women are actually having mental health issues that are substantial. What percentage of women in 2022, adult women, do you think have substantial mental health issues? Adult women. And it has nothing to do with medical treatment. Just how many. I'm going to read. I'm saying half, 40, 35, 90, 90, 90, 75. All over the place. High numbers though. A lot of numbers over 50 percent. Some of them as low as 20 percent. Over on YouTube numbers are really high. Two-thirds. Something. All right.

Now you sexists, stop your answers for a moment because I want to get the same for men. All right. Adult men. What percentage do you think have a mental health issue? Everything from zero to 100. But I'm seeing lower numbers across the board, which is compatible with the study I just told you that men at least are reporting less. I don't know if they have less, but they report less.

All right. I feel it's closer to 80 percent both male and women. 80 percent. That my definition of substantial mental illness is something that really is affecting your life every day. You know, not something that's just a fleeting thought, but it just really affects your life every day. I think 80 percent of both. And the reason is the society has changed to the point where it's not meeting our basic needs. And when society doesn't meet your basic needs, you have a mental situation that is not healthy. So I think that 80 percent of us are in a mental health crisis of one way or another.

So now that you've made assumptions about other people, we're going to talk about you now. This might have more to do with my audience. Now here's what I expect. My audience is more male than female by quite a bit and more conservative than Democrat by quite a bit. I would guess that if I asked the men if you have mental health issues that most of you would say no. So I'm going to ask that right now.

Context —

So because most of you are men and most of you lean right, how many of you for yourself — you're only going to talk about yourself — do you have mental health issues? Some yeses, nos. A lot of yeses. Yup, yup, yup. Nos, nos. Yes. A lot more yeses than I expected. But I'm not sure we can know what percentage that is because people would be more likely to say yes if it is yes. A lot of yeses. A lot…

Next segment → →