a correlation. People who have bad health have bad vitamin D, right?

So I would love to have somebody explain to people, as it happens, "Well we don't know if the data is right but the way you're thinking about the data is definitely wrong." You get that? There are two unknowns here. One is, is the data right in the first place? And then secondly, did you analyze it correctly? And I don't think necessarily either of them are true. I'm not sure they analyzed it right and I'm not even sure the data is right.

So if you're jumping to the conclusion that vitamin D has been proven to work, it might be true. I certainly want it to be true because that would make me look good. But it's not there. It's just not there.

All right, here's a — I don't know how to handle this next situation. So with your permission will you give me a little flexibility on this next topic? Because I'm going to confess to you that I don't know if I'm going to handle it the right way. So I'm just going to do my best. The only thing I'm going to promise you is I'll do my best but I think I'm going to fall a little short. All right? And there's a couple of points to be made.

Number one, if I ever mentioned to you that every time there's a story in the news it comes back to me somehow, like somehow I end up being connected to stories and it doesn't make any sense to me — I mean given that I do this and I do this in public, but even doing it in public I don't have that much exposure to the general public — but the number of times that I have some kind of connection to something in the news is just weird. It's just weird.

All right, here's the story. So you know that Sam Harris was getting some pushback for some things he said about Trump. And here's what happened yesterday. I got a longish message from Sam Harris, private message, in which he explained his position better. Now here's my problem. What the hell do I do now? It was a private message. It was a private message. But I thought it was an important one. In other words, wouldn't you like to know his argument? I don't know if he's made the argument exactly that way anywhere else.

So here's what I don't want to do. I don't want to read you his message because it was a private message. But I also don't want him to be sitting out there having offered something like a defense to somebody who's been talking about him in public and just leave him exposed. Because the worst thing would be for me to paraphrase him and then argue against him when he's not here to defend himself. And by the way, I probably shouldn't tell you what he said to me privately, right, even though it was related to a public discussion. So I'm uncomfortable telling you what he said but I thought I would do it this way.

So here's the way I'm going to approach it. Do you remember I told you that one way to see if you're in cognitive dissonance yourself is see if you can defend somebody else's argument that you disagree with? If you can take the other person's argument and give it in a reasonable way that's close enough to their argument, then you're probably not in cognitive dissonance. You're probably just valuing things differently. Maybe your risk assessment's a little different, that sort of thing.

All right, so I'm going to argue Sam Harris's point to support it. So I'm not going to debate it. I'm going to try to support it and then you can see if there's any holes and I'll do the best I can. So I'm going to try to actually support it. I'm not going to try to make him look bad by giving the weak version. I'm not going to, at least I'm not going to try to do that. So if that happens that would be a mistake.

All right, number one: Does Sam Harris think that Trump is like Hitler or in that class of danger? What do you think? You've seen his public statements. Do you think that he believes that? Now you might remember that prior to Trump being elected — I think it was prior to, was it just after or prior — but there was a point when I was talking to Sam Harris on his podcast that he did make a, let's say an almost an offhand Hitler analogy to Trump. So we do know that there's at least some statement in which he's made that reference.

So some of you are confirming that you've heard him make that reference. Now in his message to me he said that he does not think that Trump is in that category with Hitler. That Hitler occupies a completely different category of danger. And so I'm going to say that it was hyperbole that he ever compared Trump to Hitler. But also early on, hold on, early on you could say there's that risk. But now that Trump has served one complete term, one would have to reassess that risk. Are you with me so far?

Would you give me this following point? That no matter what Sam Harris or anybody else said about Trump early in his term or before he was elected, that that could now be discarded. Would you agree? Because what you thought would happen has to give way to four years of experience. And I would say that Sam Harris would be on the same page. I would say that he would value the four years that we observed as a higher truth than guessing what would happen. So I would say you, all of you, and he are on the same page on that. That you would put a higher value on actual experience than guessing.

Okay, now having seen Trump perform for four years, I accept Sam's statement that there's nothing Hitler-looking per se in that. You know, there's not going to be a roundup of people. He's not going to start a nuclear war for any obvious reason. And that being tough on crime and tough on immigration is not really Hitler. Okay, so far so far would you agree?

So his current view is that Trump does not occupy a dangerous as Hitler situation. Would you accept that that's a reasonable evolution of opinion from "well we don't know what risk he poses" all the way to "well we saw four years, you know, I still have my issues but it's not a Hitler problem"? Would you accept that? I do. I think that would be a reasonable evolution of opinion based on evolving information.

Now what problems does Sam still have? Well there are two things which he's mentioned recently more than others. One is Trump University as an example of Trump's character. The other is that Trump doxed some citizens. Now I have to confess I'm not aware of those stories. Vaguely I can imagine I sort of have a memory of somebody getting maybe called out by Trump and had trouble. And if that happened I would be opposed to that.

So is there anybody here who thinks that the president of the United States should be doxing individuals? No, right? Does anybody think that the president should do that? No, I don't think that's a good move. So we could agree with him that it's suboptimal, right? I think some of you are going to say sure he can do it if they do it first, whatever. But generally speaking I don't think you want your president targeting law-abiding individuals who are exercising freedom of speech. I think we'd all be on the same page, right?

And I don't think there are any Trump supporters who think that Trump University showed Trump in a good light. My personal belief about that is that Trump was just a hands-off manager and probably didn't know what was going on there. I don't know that but it's an assumption that matches everything I know about executives who have lots of businesses. I think he had 400 businesses with his name on it if you count licensing deals. You don't look after all 400 deals. I've done licensing myself. I've had lots of licensees for Dilbert. Do you think I managed all of them and tracked them all to make sure they were doing what I wanted them to do with my property? Well we required it. I mean they had to report to me but not really. That was sort of other people doing their job and you hope they did it well.

I'm guessing, and I don't have any information to back this, but if you have 400 companies with your name on it and you're doing as much business as Trump was doing, you probably didn't watch any of them too closely. I don't know how you could. So yeah, the question is who did Trump dox? But I don't think that's going to be the critical question here.

So as I understand Sam Harris's point — and I'm going to understand it to support it — there are two examples in which Trump's character is called into question: Trump University and then doxing individuals. Would you say that those two tell you something about Trump as an individual? I think so. I think so, yeah.

Now but here's the interesting thing. Why would you pick those out? So here's my observation as a hypnotist, as a trained hypnotist. One of the things you look for to see if somebody is hypnotized is that their reaction is extremely non-standard. Not completely crazy, just completely non-standard.

When was the last time somebody said that Trump has to go because those times he doxed people? Have you heard anybody else ever say that? Has anybody ever heard anybody ever say that a big problem with Trump is his doxing of individuals? So there's no way to know what's in the head of other people and so I'm not going to diagnose somebody by reading their mind. That's not a thing. I'm just saying if you were looking for a signal for cognitive dissonance that would be a gigantic glaring signal. Doesn't mean it is. Doesn't mean it is. It just means that that's exactly what a signal would look like. A highly unusual opinion which still has some logical connective tissue.

Because when somebody is hypnotized and they come up with let's say the cognitive dissonance explanation of why they're doing something, the cognitive dissonance explanation also makes sort of sense. In other words they can piece it together with some kind of logical trail but you still look at it and say I don't think anybody else in that situation would have said that. Of all the things you could say that's an unusual one.

So without having an opinion of whether the doxing is good or bad, I think we'd all agree it's bad if we heard the examples. I'm not familiar with the examples but I'm open to the fact that if a president doxed somebody that's really bad. Shouldn't do that, right?

And so when you see an unusual opinion that's a flag. Now that doesn't mean that he's experiencing cognitive dissonance. Are you clear on that? It doesn't mean he's experiencing cognitive dissonance. It just means that if he is it would look exactly like that. That's all.

Now the other thing you would look for for cognitive dissonance is a trigger. A trigger is if something that you were sure would be true doesn't happen, right? So I said from the beginning that Trump would be an expensive president, meaning he'd cause a lot of trouble and he'd break a lot of dishes, but that there might be some big things that the country wants, at least part of the country wants, that he would get done. And sure enough he got done, you know, in my opinion, North Korea, defused that. You know, the Abraham Accords. You know, I think he tightened up the border better than, you know, not as good as somebody wanted but better than it's been done, you know. And so you could come up with a bunch of things he did.

Now in my opinion my expectation of Trump was pretty close to what happened. So there's no trigger for cognitive dissonance in my case or at least one that I can't see. Maybe you can see it but I can't see it because I got what I expected.

But now imagine if you were talking about Trump in the most let's say cataclysmic terms before he got elected and it looked like the end of the world and you'd really gone out there saying it was going to be a disaster. And then Trump gets in office and he does something closer to a good job, not at all what it looked like it was going to be if you were a critic. That's a trigger. That's a perfect trigger. That's a textbook trigger for cognitive dissonance. What you expected is wildly different than what you got.

And that wasn't true for Republicans. Republicans expected a set of behaviors from Trump and they got them for the most part. They got exactly what they expected. There's no trigger there. It's only the people who were surprised who were triggered. So that again doesn't mean he's experiencing cognitive dissonance. It just means it would look exactly like that if he were. That's all you can say.

But let me take his argument and finish it because there's something to it. And he goes on to say that Trump's what he would say is obvious character failings as evidenced by Trump University — this is Sam's argument — and as evidenced by doxing and other behaviors that look cowardly and or selfish, that those are dangerous characteristics to have in the president. But nothing like the danger of a Hitler.

And so when Sam says he's not too concerned that maybe the Hunter Biden laptop story got suppressed for the purpose of helping Trump lose the election, that maybe that's not that different than the Weiner laptop coming out that may have helped Trump get elected hypothetically. So if you said to me well those things are about equal, maybe it would be better if neither of them happen but they're not that different in impact, that's not crazy. That's not crazy.

If you put yourself in the other situation, if you knew that the only thing that kept Hillary Clinton out of office was some sketchy stuff in the news — in fact maybe that is exactly what happened, we don't know — but if you knew that's the only thing that kept her out of office and you were a Republican, how concerned would you be? You wouldn't be that concerned.

Now I don't want to speak for you but on average people are willing to accept a little imperfection on their own team if they get what they want. That's pretty normal, right? So I think it's pretty normal for somebody to say I would have accepted a little imperfection to get the outcome I wanted because I think a different president makes a big difference.

Now what about — Sam Harris also famously said that he had, I forget the exact words, but in some ways more respect for Osama bin Laden than for Trump. But this has to be understood in terms of an intellectual argument, right? As soon as you put it into an emotional argument it makes your head explode. No, bin Laden's a monster, Trump's just a politician. No, but that's not what he was talking about. He's not talking about bin Laden directly murdering people versus Trump having a policy he doesn't like. The point was that bin Laden was operating on principle. It just happened to be a principle that we hate. But he was sort of internally consistent with his Islamic beliefs, at least the extremistic Islamic beliefs. Whereas Sam's point is that Trump is not moored to any moral or ethical foundation and therefore he's a little more unpredictable and likely to operate for his own best interest in any given situation.

So do you think that it's dangerous to have somebody you can't predict as president because he's going to sort of go where the self-interest goes? That's not a terrible argument. Now I have counterarguments but I'm not going to do that in this conversation because this conversation is to see if I can explain his argument in a way that makes it make sense without making it sound crazy. And I think that his argument is not crazy if you accept the following clarifications which he has provided.

Clarification number one: He does not believe that Trump is dangerous like a Hitler would be. He believes he's unpredictable because he's not moored to a moral ethical foundation. I accept that. I accept that. If I were arguing against it, which I'm not going to do today, I would say something about the presidency has more transparency than most things and that he's offered to give us those services on our behalf and we can watch it happen while it's happening. But there's not that much transparency so there's always an issue. And so if I take Sam's argument I'd say there's not that much transparency. There's not enough because we still wonder what happens behind closed doors and stuff. But it's not a bad argument.

So if you allow that the bin Laden argument was just an intellectual exercise, which is what it was, that's fine. It's just an intellectual exercise. If you allow that the Hitler stuff was just hyperbole and also has given way to experience — we've seen what Trump can and cannot do in office — I don't think Sam's opinion is as crazy as you do.

Let me ask you this. If I said there was some other president coming into office, let's say it was a Democrat, and you felt that that Democrat's history suggested that the Democrat would do whatever it took, that there was no moral underpinnings, would you be uncomfortable with that president? Probably. Probably, right? Were you uncomfortable with LBJ? Were you uncomfortable with — I'm not sure about Bill Clinton. I'm not going to go that far. I have a different opinion about Hillary than I do about Bill. I think Bill Clinton was a solid president. That's my opinion. I think he was a solid president. Yeah. And I'm not looking for an argument on that. You know, people can disagree on stuff like that.

All right, so how did I do? How did I do? Did I — you don't have to agree with my argument but do you think that I've made Sam Harris's point look reasonable? Does it look reasonable? Well once you take away the hyperbole there's a solid core there. I guess some yeses, mostly nos. You know we're deep into team sport territory here and when you get this deeply into team sport I know you don't want to give the other team a point. I get that.

But let me ask you this. Did I at least pass the test that I could express the argument in a full-throated way? Would you accept that? Did I express the argument in a full-throated way? I think I did. I think I did. Now that would suggest that I don't have cognitive dissonance. And again this is a rule of thumb. It's not like some scientific guarantee. But the strong indication is that I can tell his argument and I don't have an unusual opinion about things.

All right, so I feel good about that. But here's my bottom line. I think that the difference between Sam's opinion and mine comes down to one thing: wildly different opinions about what is dangerous. Wildly different opinions about what's important.

For example I would say that the 50 intelligence agents lying about Hunter's laptop destroys the credibility of our most important systems and also reveals that they're corrupt. And I would put that at, in terms of a scale of one to ten, that's like a nine in terms of how bad that is. That's like a nine. How bad is a president doxing an individual? Well on a moral, ethical, and preference level it's a ten in badness. But in terms of how it affects the world it's a one. It's a one. It affects those people and I don't like that at all. You know, any doxing by a president I'm completely against. But you have to put it in perspective.

I would say that the 50 intel people, ex-intel professionals, lying is a big freaking deal. That's a nine. Doxing, it's a one. Except that the individuals involved, of course it's a ten to them. So I don't know that Sam and I differ on the logic of anything. I don't know that we have different data, at least that hasn't been obvious to me. But we're definitely valuing things differently.

I'll give you another one. I imagine that January 6 would be higher. And well since he hasn't talked about it I won't put this in his head. Let's say me compared to a Democrat. A typical Democrat would say January 6 was just horrible, like it was nearly the end of the republic. Do you know what I say about January 6? Again not counting the violence part, which is if you were a recipient of the violence or you were jailed because of it that problem is a 10 and a 10 for you, no question about it. But what effect did it have on the world or the country? In my opinion, stronger. There it is. Well okay, I just outed myself there didn't I? I guess that was a non-standard opinion wasn't it?

So then I have to ask myself was that cognitive dissonance? Here's why I say stronger. I'll give you my argument. Doesn't mean I'm not experiencing cognitive dissonance. Now keep in mind that I've condemned Trump's actions on January 6. So in theory that should protect me, right? Because I'm on record. I said Biden won from day one. You know that's not going to change. I've never gone back on that. The system elected Biden. So even if there were hypothetically any imperfections I still go with the system. We got to fix the system but you got to go with the system while you're fixing it. That's just my opinion.

So my opinion on January 6 is that it made America stronger. Would anybody agree with that before you hear my argument? Before I give you the argument: January 6, the protests, even with the violence which I condemned totally, made America stronger. Yeah, I think reasonable people can disagree on this one.

Here's my argument. It's sort of the Jordan Peterson argument about individuals that you should be dangerous but learn to control it. Your nature should be as dangerous as possible. It keeps society operating. Here's what I want. I want my government, no matter who it is, be they Democrat or be they Republican or anything else, I want my government to know that if I've got questions and my fellow citizens have questions we're going to show up. We're going to show up. Well not me. I like to have bathrooms I don't have to wait for so I won't be there. But for the people who like to do that kind of stuff they'll be there. Yeah, I'll try to do something useful at home where I'm more comfortable. But the rest of you, I love the fact that you show up.

So my take on — and I'm going to say the same thing for Black Lives Matter. All right, so here I'm going to show at least maybe a possibility that I'm not experiencing cognitive dissonance. Black Lives Matter created some bad stuff, created lots of destruction and death. I don't mind living in a country where people are going to hit the streets to fight for fairness. I don't hate that. I hate all the violence. I hate the disruption. I hate that they may be confused. I hate that they may be semi-hypnotized. I hate that the news is brainwashing people. I don't know that the protests were useful so I'm not saying they were useful.

So I'm going to make a real strong distinction. I don't think necessarily that January 6 was useful and I don't think that the BLM protests were useful in the end. But do you want to live in the country that won't do that? I don't. I want to live in a country where if the Republicans think something went wrong they're in the streets. And I want to live in the country — you might not like this — where if the Democrats think something is just terribly wrong they're going to hit the streets. So give me the country that protests. Thank you very much. And let them go wild. Let them make their case and let them see if they can prevail. Because you have seen cases where protests turn into something good, let's say civil rights. You've seen them where they don't turn into anything good, let's say Antifa. But I still want to live in this country. I still want to live where people will take to the streets.

All right, so I just value things completely different than other people and therefore we can get to different conclusions.

All right, while I'm defending people that you might not want me to defend, let me throw another one in the mix. Jake Tapper is getting a bunch of heat today because he retweeted Ivanka Trump's tweet promoting Jared's new book. And people are saying, "Jake Tapper, how can you retweet Jared? Are you part of the elite? What's going on here? Are you selling out?" say the CNN observers. To which I would like to add the following context. I also plugged Jake Tapper's book when it came out. It's an author thing. That's all it is.

As soon as you think this is more than one author