Ask Dr. Drew - Ask Dr. Drew - Scott Adams - Episode 5

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Creator Scott Adams has over 70 million Dilbert books and calendars in print.  He Dr. Drew to discuss his new book LOSERTHINK, politics, affirmations, and more. Order Scott Adam's book LOSERTHINK at this link and part of your purchase supports out shows: http://go.drdrew.com/loserthink Missed the live show? Get an alert next time Dr. Drew is taking calls: http://drdrew.tv Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (@KalebNation) and Susan Pinsky (@FirstLadyOfLove). THE SHOW: For over 30 years, Dr. Drew Pinsky has taken calls from all corners of the globe, answering thousands of questions from teens and young adults. To millions, he is a beacon of truth, integrity, fairness, and common sense. Now, after decades of hosting Loveline and multiple hit TV shows – including Celebrity Rehab, Teen Mom OG, Lifechangers, and more – Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio in California. On Ask Dr. Drew, no question is too extreme or embarrassing because the Dr. has heard it all. Don’t hold in your deepest, darkest questions any longer. Ask Dr. Drew and get real answers today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. Yes, indeed. Welcome. We are so glad you're here today. We have a very special guest. Before I introduce him, however, I want to remind everyone to sign up at DrDrew.TV and you'll get a message when the streaming comes live.

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I want to thank Caleb Nation, Susan Pinsky for producing the show, and call screener Lindsay K. Floyd, who's helping us out today. And the questions are at 9842-DR-DREW. Again, 9842- 373739. I want to get right to my guest it is the internationally best-selling author renowned creator of dilbert the author of loser thinks the loser think the one and only scott adams scott welcome thanks for having me

i'm glad i made it all the way to a special guest. You're very special. You're very special to me. Well, thank you. The reason you're special to me, I'll start out with a full disclosure, is I'm a fan of your periscopes. And the reason I am so taken with them is they calm me down. I feel like the world is a buzzing, blooming mess, and I can't understand what's going on, and you helped me make sense of it through your persuasion prism. And persuasion, okay, now, Scott, what's fascinating to me is persuasion was something I never paid attention to. I mean, I was trained as a scientist, and you always talk about what the objective thinkers are like, so I'm one of those thinkers. And I always thought persuasion was a rational argument, like in the Lincoln-Douglas debate or something,

where you help people come to a rational conclusion, and you've taught me that that's not the case, number one. And then I always worry, are we living in a world where it's not the case, or it has always been not the case? Tell me what that's all about. Well, it definitely has been not the case or it has always been not the case tell me what that's all about well it definitely has been always the case but it's more pronounced now because the nature of social media and the fact that it's turned into two teams which produce effectively two separate movies on one screen as I like to say for your uh for your viewers who don't know much about

my background I'm also a trained hypnotist and I've been studying persuasion in all of its forums. I've read about it. So it's something that was sort of a hobby slash talent that I was adding to my writing stack so I could be a better writer. And it just turned out to be the perfect kind of filter to look at the world today, the Trump world and all that's happening now well let me stop you i i found you when you'd written the bur the book how to fail nearly everything and still still succeed right uh is that did i get the title right yeah close and failed almost everything it's still still winning and you you were doing the rounds on that and that was excuse me when i first heard you speaking about persuasion you were doing a lot on that. And that was, excuse me, when I first heard you speaking about persuasion, you were doing a lot of podcasts.

Do you remember back then? And I was like, what is this? What have I been missing? And particularly you talked about Norman Vincent Peale and your training in hypnosis. But I didn't get the sense that you did it to improve your writing. I got the sense that you did it because you felt it was important to understand these things. Well, there are a few skills that you need to understand the world. One is business and economics, if I can lump them together. Because if you don't understand

how money works and who's doing what for what kind of financial gain, you're often lost. And the money can actually pierce know, pierce the veil pretty quickly. You say, wait a minute, who's making money? Okay, now I understand the situation. So I'm an economics major. And primarily, I wanted to understand how to navigate life. And I thought, well, I got to get money, right? That's like, right in the beginning, you know, you got to get health, you got to get money. And then somewhere along the line in my early twenties, I had a chance to become a hypnotist. I took a class. I knew somebody who was in it. So I just signed up and it completely changed my worldview. Uh, but once I realized how important it was and I became a writer, I realized how compatible it was,

you know, to add to what I call my talent stack. It just stacks really neatly with what I already do. But it's also one of those skills that, as you're discovering, stacks neatly with almost everything. There's nothing that you couldn't be better at if you understood persuasion. Right. I completely agree with you. And it's funny to me to think I'm trying to navigate life better. I better go learn persuasion.

Mine was I better understand the human experience, and I better study psychology and I better study history. And I think that's the way people used to do it, but I don't think that is as effective now as just simply persuasion itself. And I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that. Well, you know, I also don't believe in free will so whatever you're going to feel you're going to feel so that that's another conversation but you know the great magnet's fault yeah so there's nothing you can do about it but uh certainly um i i predicted i think it was in 2015 i said that trump would change more than politics he would change how we view reality itself i think i'm pretty close on that prediction you know a lot of people he's certainly changed reality itself right

well he's changed also the way we look at it so he's done both but there are a lot of people who are saying what everything i thought was true isn't working out my my worldview no longer predicts and that's the standard I tell people to use. If your filter on life predicts pretty well, not every time, but pretty well, what's going to happen next, you probably have a good filter. But if your filter on life always gets it wrong, as in this guy will never be president, the economy will never be good, right down the line, it's time to adjust your filter. There's something you're missing. Well, that's why I started listening to you.

You were making lots of predictions early on, including the Trump ascendancy. And I was like, huh? What? What? I better listen to this guy because he keeps hitting it. Now, so far, you've been off on two things. Kamala Harris. But I think that you may end up.

I think you may end up. up, you may get vindicated. I understand. You may get vindicated on that one because I think she's made a deal with somebody, and I agree with that. But today was a particularly interesting day for you in that I felt like today we're having this conversation in the shadow of a decision by our executive office to kill a world leader, the Iranian terrorist Soleimani. And it was not so much that decision, but the rhetorical flair that followed that you felt was, it seemed like it really upset you. Like this was a low point for you in this presidency. I got to say it was maybe the president's worst week, persuasion-wise. And I've been one of his biggest supporters, specifically on the plane of how good his skill is, his tool set. And when I heard Lindsey Graham come out before the president's

tweets, and Lindsey said, you know, Iran, you have to understand that your oil refineries are vulnerable. That could be next. That was nice, clean, specific, visual. And if the president had adopted that, and I mistakenly assumed that he had, otherwise Lindsey Graham would not be talking like that in public, but there was some disconnect. So they're not on the same page. So the president added these 52 historical sites, some of them with cultural importance now that's as wrong as you can be because you're taking something that sold the country right because it never was about the people yeah you know if you if you attack the refinery of course that's going to affect the people through the economy but i think people would better understand it's not personal as soon as you get into culture and heritage,

it doesn't feel like it's not personal anymore. And then when you throw the 52 on there, which is, you know, to line up with the number of hostages back in what, 1979? If we're still fighting the war from 1979 or looking for revenge for it, we're falling into the Middle East's worst problem, which is they live in the past and they're always trying to win that war that's already done. So it couldn't be worse than that. And to contrast it with Lindsey Graham's approach was as close to perfect as you can make a threat. I mean, if you want your threat to stick and you don't want a war, that was a good one.

Specific, visual, no dead bodies, nothing personal. It's just what we got to do. I love that. Let's, for the sake of this little argument for a second, say, okay, Trump is great at the persuasion techniques per your assessment. Why do you think he makes people so crazy? And I'm wondering if it's his impulsivity.

And if today you're seeing an example of that, is that possible? I have a hypothesis and none of us know, right? Cause we can't look in his brain. We don't know how the gears are working there, but just observationally people who have had bad experiences with bullies, or maybe they've been me too, or they've just been pushed around, they had a bad boss. They've just had some problem with maybe an authority figure who was, you know, crushing them in some way. I think they look at him and say, well, he's one of those.

It's every problem that's been bugging me my whole life got wrapped up in this one person and he's not even trying to hide it he's bullying right out there it's that's an interesting hypothesis and i and i think you're on to something because you know i've been having lots of talks with millennials and things and what i keep hearing is this a similar kind of feeling about society at large that that you know sort of there are psychological theorists that say you know when you if your dad wasn't available or if the dad wasn't sort of a good representation of the society at large in the home then society at large becomes the problem and so we may be having a little pandemic of that stuff and i'm wondering

if now he is the symbol of all that and sort of embodies what particularly a lot of young people are most concerned about. Well, we also have a situation where if you've watched any insurance commercials on TV, you can see that the… Geico commercials or the… Any of the commercials that… The one with the guy from, the actor from Whiplash. Right. So you notice that there's a trend that the male is usually portrayed in commercials anyway as bumbling and incompetent. Yes.

The woman is super competent. She solves the problem. So we also have the problem of how do people think about strong male leaders and i think that you could probably substitute any strong male leader and you still get a lot of the same problems that trump is getting just a visceral i just don't like that particularly older white males right probably yes i mean that's that's the way yeah society is lined up that that's yeah that's that's the the worst you know offender is the the older white male with power particularly a white male that's had the benefit of the um you know the male male privilege and the patriarchy and all that stuff so he kind of embodies all that so let's say let's

say that's true let's say that's true so do you think he has an awareness of that he must be aware of his uh in his influence or what what kind of reaction people have i mean it'd be impossible right that he didn't have reaction to that okay but so my question is why doesn't he tone it down a little bit i understand it's it it doesn't coincide with his technique but why not balance you know what i mean i keep wondering why he doesn't balance that out with with his technique well you know here's the thing probably not one of us would have said keep doing what you're doing and you could become elected president yeah so the first thing we have to so we have to accept some humility in our ability to analyze these things the other thing you have to accept is that in 2019 and beyond, people are really talking to their base.

So if he does an exceptional job of convincing his base, well, he's done. It actually doesn't make sense to try to be two different people because you'd have to be two people. And he prefers to be one person who's the same all the time now the other thing is and i'm sure you've run into this humans love consistency yeah now he's inconsistent in some of his statements and stuff but he's always trump he's never not him and if you're expecting him to apologize well you're going to be waiting a little while you know if you're if you're expecting him to be exactly right on the facts well you're going to be waiting a little while. If you're expecting him to be exactly right on the facts, well, you're going to be waiting a while because he likes to get it approximately right and directionally right. And he's happy with that, apparently.

So there's that. Now, let me give you a little thought experiment. Please. This might be a shock to some of the viewers. Imagine, if you will, that President Trump did everything he's's done so there's no difference in what he's done but imagine that the news only described it without an opinion right we wouldn't be in this situation you could take almost anything that is just wildly he's being complained about and if the news just said well you know he was in that meeting and he used a rude word some Some people complained about it.

That would be the whole story. And people wouldn't know what to make of it, except, oh, I guess he swears in meetings and he says some rude things. And he told us he was going to be politically correct. Well, I guess that's just some more of that. But as soon as the pundits get on and just waves and waves of pundits say, well, what that means is that in his mind, he's having a racist thought or a terrible thought or something something got a bad thought so we've all become these amateur mind readers and if you watch the news it's just massive mind reading one after another and it's very persuasive because it's so much of it and if you never watched sides right both both right well well that's what i was going to get to next i just saw a gallup poll about faith uh let's see trust in the media

and of course there's always been a difference the democrats always had more trust republicans were less but that gap was sort of consistent for years and years and then 2016 happened and they just went in different directions now Now, the other problem is that the people on the left are watching their news. They might switch between CNN, MSNBC, or read the New York Times, but they're only getting one story. The conservatives, by and large, are also exposed to that story because it's everywhere. But then they also watch Fox News. They turn on Breitbart. They follow their people on Twitter. And they get two stories.

Now they can choose. And, of course, people choose a story that's more compatible with their beliefs anyway. But at least they see two stories. And I think that the conservatives are seeing the media making up stuff because they can see the other story where there's this whole swath of the the world who doesn't know that's the case that they think they're actually watching straight news like it always had been in the past and it's not that anymore it's not your grandfather's news i i think it's why i there's a i'm hoping at least there's and i'm sitting in it myself which is a growing body of what so-called independence of people that are

sitting in the middle watching like a tennis match going, what the hell? What's actually going on here? Am I right? Or is that just wishful thinking? Well, I think a lot of people are confused and just observing and don't know what to make of the whole thing. But, you know, the persuasion filter does calm those nerves. And by the way, you're saying that one of the things you liked

was that I kind of talk you off the roof on some of these things. There's a good general rule about the news. It's never as bad as you think. I mean, maybe sometimes, but probably 95% of the time, you know, unless it's a nuclear bomb exploded somewhere where, okay, that's plenty bad there's there's nothing good about that but when you hear somebody's talking about something and there might be something in the future you can almost always say probably not what i've gotten what i've started

to become upset about though is government not functioning i mean you know the the utopia of california i'll give you as case a and then the federal government is case b where the politicians are focusing on things that i can't understand when what i worry about is three people dying in the streets of la county every freaking day and that's okay don't worry that. Pay no attention to the dead bodies in the street. That's okay. Small price to pay. To what? For what? To maintain the status quo, to maintain the failed policies. What's the point you're making? We got a problem. Let's roll up our sleeves and get these things fixed. And that's the part I'm really troubled by. Yeah. I feel as though all problems need champions and those champions need some kind of a system and resources and you know a way to get their message through so of course you know you've got lobbyists

for the everything and the lobbyists have a system they have power they have money but who who exactly besides you is is working on let's say homeless in california yeah people are talking but who's the one who said all right i'm going to quit my job this is my job now i'm going to do is working on, let's say, homeless in California. People are talking. Who's the one who said, all right, I'm going to quit my job. This is my job now. I'm going to do everything I can. They're probably those people, but I can't even name them. I can, but they are completely, not completely,

but largely neutralized by the laws. The laws and the bureaucracy and the lack of focus of our government where it should be and so they they can't do what they need to do so it's so they're literally in not even in slow motion they're like almost going back well they're going backwards i mean the streets are getting well growing but does that tell you it's the wrong people because let's let's say uh i don't pick a name let's's say Peter Thiel or Bill Gates or somebody said, this is going to be my thing. I'm going to work on this, you know,

fixing this thing. Do you think the laws would be the same problem for a billionaire? I don't think so. So, so I think that, that we don't have the firepower to get, you know, to change the laws because laws change,

you know, we can make it, we can change the law. And, and you may see the federal government step in because they can supersede a lot of this stuff they can declare an emergency and take care of business and by the way there's a there's a hack let's call it a let's call it kind of a a hack of the system um which is you could you could suggest that you're going to do a small trial yeah a small

test because it's easier to get people to say give me a temporary waiver from the law yeah we'll just see how it goes no I understand why the law exists okay and and are there uh well-known trials that are working right there well for instance the so-called Medicaid exclusion, which has been one of the major problems, is you can't fund treatment of the chronically mentally ill. It's been just excluded from the resources. They are now running a trial program in Washington, D.C. So the representatives can see it right there in their own town, see how it works. And my understanding is they're going to try to roll that out oh okay and how many uh tests do you think are going on of various things that would help the homeless slash addiction slash mentally ill is it more than one because it seems like the sort

of thing where you if you don't have half a dozen tests going you you know you get to get the end of one and then what do you do one more to find out what extra you can learn the what i want to say is the tests have been underway they're working in certain areas and in certain ways and for whatever reason the government chooses to claim that their failure is when they are successes because they don't fit oh they don't fit their narrative and so well we can fix that okay we can say a persuasion thing i'm all yours well you know i i've been speculating that the form of our republic has changed and people don't realize it meaning that you know years ago it was uh we're going to elect you and you'd get on your horse and go to washington and vote for us and then six

months from now we'll see you again tell us what you did right so that was the best system we had then a republic made sense now i think social media and and the influence of people with lots of reach is becoming important to the point that it moves the government. And I think social media wags the dog for anything social media understands. If it's too complicated, the government still has all the control because we don't know what's going on. But if it's something we completely understand, we can move the needle. If there are write-ups that would support from some credible source that says, yes, these tests worked, even though the government saw it differently, let's see it. Let me tell you one of the most frustrating examples of that, which is there are organizations in downtown Los Angeles that have been doing this work for years and know exactly how to do it and do it very successfully. But because they're faith-based, we can't even acknowledge their existence and there's a lot

of that wow if there was one problem that seems solvable in the age of trump it would be that well i know that ben carson seriously yeah ben carson has spoken to those guys maybe he has a plan he's like i i i texted or you know i d DMed Scott a while ago that I spent the whole day with Secretary Azar and Secretary Ben Carson. Forget whatever you've heard about Ben Carson. He's not a good speaker. He's an excellent dude and a brilliant guy, and he knows how to administer, and he's assessing these things very acutely. Azar is an amazing guy, an amazing guy, and I believe he'll be helpful as well.

So whatever you believe about the administration, I have experienced these people, and the secretary-level people, at least, that I've encountered, I'm very pleased that they're there, and I look forward to success. But is that fixable at the secretary level? They kind of got to get the boss on board for that. I don't

know. I don't know. Let's take a little break. I have calls. People want to ask you questions and then I want to talk a little bit if you don't mind after the break, specifics about, just give me a little give my audience a little primer on persuasion and what they can learn from Loser Think, which is essentially a

persuasion book and let's get into that. Scott Adams, which is essentially a persuasion book. And let's get into that. Scott Adams, of course. Do you want to refer people to any websites or anything, Scott? Well, Dilbert.com if you want to see Dilbert. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm at Scott Adams Says, all one word. The CBD industry is still pretty much the Wild West. When it comes to claims and criticisms, the science is catching up with the industry.

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That is my website, drdrew.com slash s-o-c-i-a-l-c-b-d. For a limited time, you can save 20% at checkout with the code DRDREW. Now let's get back to the show. Needles have increasingly become a part of everyday life. Proper disposal is both difficult and expensive. We have the solution. Simpler, safer, affordable, and fulfills the obligation to protect our environment. A single stick with something

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technology. SandMidi, it will solve your problems. Find out more at NeedleDestructionDevice.com. This is kind of an interesting question. Let's talk to Andrew. Hey, Andrew. Hello, Dr. Perry. You're one of my heroes. I've been listening to you for 20 years. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Since you were 15.

Crazy. Yeah. Sorry that Scott Adams can't hear me right now, but my question is for both of you. But you can ask him whenever you get him back. Sure. So I live in Boise, Idaho, but I'm moving to California in a couple weeks. And I've been thinking a lot about the homelessness epidemic. And?

And what I'm wondering is, is there something innately American about the way that we blame the individual. And is there some persuasion thing that needs to happen? Is there some way that we could persuade people to start doing it more holistically? And how do we do that? How do we get... Let me see if I can answer your question this way, which is that one of the things that has shown to work with people with the kinds of issues that we're seeing on our streets is a community-based intervention. There's something called the Trieste Plan, Trieste, Italy, which has had a great deal of success, which essentially is a psychiatric facility that's set up like a communal organization where there's lots of vocational rehabilitation, opportunity for work and

engagement and transportation. So these little communities and their treatment centers at their core around which they operate become these little operational organizations where people can get care and work. And guess what? It works. Now, the problem in this country is we just say, oh, they can do whatever they want. You can't tell them to do that. They can do whatever they want. And part of the illness, the illnesses that are on the street,

block the ability to see what's happening to them. For instance, one of the tragedies people always point at is that 90% of people with addiction do not get treatment. Did you know that, Andrew? 90% do not seek or access treatment. It's a tragedy, right? So they took, there's a large study that looked at that population, that 90%, and interviewed them and tried to figure out what happened.

Why aren't you accessing it? Do you know what 80% of that 90% responded? What's that? I don't need it. Why would I need treatment? I'm fine. What's the big deal? And these were people that are addicted to heroin and meth.

Why would I need treatment? Because that's a feature of the illness. Same thing with schizophrenia. Same thing with bipolar disorder mania, which is, I'm fine. Stay away from me. I can't trust you. It's a steady state that they get into because of the brain disorder that blocks their ability to see

the consequence. It's called anosognosia. In addiction, we call it denial, but it's still the same phenomenon. It's anosognosia. And it happens in dementia and it happens in stroke. But in those conditions, we rush in and help the patients. We demand they get care. But if they have anosognosia from addiction or schizophrenia the law specifically precludes intervention and that's something that no other country does it's insane it's it's it's it's built on laws that were reaction to the excesses of psychiatry in the 50s uh and they i'm not going to defend those excesses they were terrible but people shouldn't be dying every day because of the laws that are now 70 years old in response to that. So that's my thing.

Well, is there something that we can do to persuade the American public and the politicians that this is a problem that all of us need to get together and solve? When I get Scott back on the line, I will ask him exactly that because I think it's a good question. Are there ways? I think what he would say is, I think what he was just alluding to before we had a technical issue was he was saying there needs to be a champion. There needs to be someone like a Bill Gates or somebody that really has some persuasion skill, persuasion ability beyond persuasion itself, has actual money or power or something that can make a difference.

But I will ask him that. So are we getting any closer to getting Scott back? Okay. Okay, almost there. What's that, Andrew? And then also, if you get a chance, I'd love to hear both of your perspectives on Andrew Yang. It's kind of related to that.

Oh, yeah. I think Scott digs Andrew Yang. I certainly love the hear both of your perspectives on Andrew Yang. It's kind of related to that. Oh, yeah. I think Scott digs Andrew Yang. I certainly love the way he thinks. I love the fact that he's a problem solver, right? That's how I see him. And because I'm independent, I don't care if people are Democrat or Republican. I don't care. If somebody has good ideas, I'm listening.

And he seems like that kind of guy, lots of good ideas. All right, Andrew. Thanks for your call. I'm glad you two are talking of good ideas. All right, Andrew. Thanks for your call. I'm glad you two are talking. Thank you. All right, buddy. Scott's looking for a second head of headphones. Head of set phones?

Set of headphones. I know. He's running around in the background. It's kind of funny. Okay. All right. So take another call. I am.

I am. Here we go. Okay. Okay. That was Andrew, and let's talk to Kristen. Kristen, you there? Hi, Kristen. Uh-oh, is she no longer there?

All right. I will go to another caller. This is James. James, go ahead there. What's up? Hi. I had a question for you, Dr. Drew. Yep, right here.

And also Scott. When you made the comment about homelessness, that it's a mental health problem, not a housing problem, using the analogy of the massive amount of immigrants, almost all of them are not homeless in Central California. I have an extremely profound persuasion. So let me say what I said. What I said was, my co-host on KBC, Leanne Tweeden, said this, and I thought, that is really interesting.

She said, we were talking to somebody about the number of undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles County, and somebody was telling us, that's about 1.5 million. And she goes, why aren't any of those on the street? If housing is such a problem, how did 1.5 million people without a job, a penny, a family, a country, they all found housing. How can we have a housing problem unless you're going to make the case that the undocumented workers pushed out the citizens into the streets, which I don't think anybody is making that case. How can we say there's a housing problem when 1.5 million people found housing without anything? They had nothing going on and they still found housing. That's pretty interesting, isn't it?

It's staggering. I think we have Scott back. Scott, are you with me? All right, we're going to get him up here in a second. So did you hear what I was talking to James about? He was saying he was persuaded by that really kind of an argument. Did you hear what I said? Yeah, that's one of my favorite arguments, actually. The first time I heard that, you know, where are all those people?

How come they can get housing? That was like a real, it ripped my brain out of my head and rearranged it and put it back in. I've never been able to look at it the same since I heard that. That was a real insightful thing that was. Yep. And so whenever they talk about housing, I just go, how much of a housing problem can we have here if people in that condition can find housing? But people with brain disorders, well, that's a different thing. They're not interested in housing. Those diseases take you to the street. They motivate you to go to the street, and they motivate you not to want to take care.

They're called resistant patients, and that's the population that the Community Mental Health Act, which was established in 1963, never dealt with. And those are the ones that now are accumulating on the street, which are the resistant mental health patients. Addicts are a big piece of it. The other thing, Scott, I was telling another caller was that, do you know that 90% of addicts do not access treatment for addiction? 90%. Did you know that number? 90%. That sounds amazing. Only 10% get treatment. So there was a recent study. This is from SAMHSA. They went out and they looked at that 90% and they studied them and said, why aren't you getting treatment?

Do you know what 80% of that 90% said? I don't want it. I don't need it. Yeah. Why do I need treatment? And that's the brain disorder. That's the condition of addiction. Or is it?

Let me throw my hypothesis in here. I call it the pleasure unit hypothesis, which is that if a human doesn't have enough units of pleasure on average in a day, they'd rather just kill themselves because life isn't worth it. And if they think they can't get there also. And it seems to me that there's a class of people for whom they've looked at their options and they said, I can put this needle in my arm and I'm going to have a terrific afternoon. There's not a single other way I can do that. And if my only other option is to lay here in my own feces, being completely aware of it and struggling and in pain and everything's bad and my future is terrible,

I think I'd rather just check out. Right. But what the brain research shows is that thinking about the future having no option and that the frontal cortical functions associated with making that decision are impaired. And so they can't see other options. They can't acknowledge, they can't imagine that anything else They can't acknowledge, they can't imagine that anything else could be better. That's the problem. Have you seen those tests where they get people to save more for their retirement when they show them a digitally aged version of their own face? So they can say, oh, I'm not screwing somebody who's a concept. If I spend all my money now and don't make enough for retirement I'm screwing me

look at me there I am right on the screen right so so there's at least some evidence that people who don't naturally have the ability to plan ahead and do hard things now to get it there's some ability that can be influenced yes and and what you're making a case of that a lot of people are interested in is whether there's a virtual reality therapy of some type that could possibly manipulate those systems to until they restore their normal function and i think you're on to something i think that's i think they one day will have something like that so so i actually bought a virtual reality machine so i could sort of understand that world a little bit i spent a little bit of time in it and i will tell you that your body recognizes it as real even when your brain says it's not.

To the point where there was a ledge where I'd walk to the ledge and I just had to put my foot off and it would look as though I'm going to fall a great length. I was in a room of my house and I couldn't take the step. You get on a roller coaster in VR, you feel the roller coaster, even though you're not moving. I've been on one too. I was in one where I was fighting and had swords and bow and arrow and thing. And I was doing it for about 10 minutes. And then one of the researchers,

I guess I meandered out of my circle that I was supposed to be in. He put his hand on my shoulder and I swung at the guy like it was part of the whole scene. I couldn't differentiate the VR piece from the hand on the shoulder, but I reacted profoundly to it.

Yeah. Once you've experienced it and you see this power, you know that that's where everything's heading. I mean, all education, all training is all going to be virtual reality. No doubt about it. This is one of the few predictions the few you know predictions you can make with you know you could put your whole your whole assets on it's all someday it's going to be all virtual reality and i certainly think the medical uses are probably extraordinary brain

yeah brain uses i think are going to be very very interesting and you said something that's in a similar vein a couple days ago which which again made a little thematic shift for me, which you started talking about music being a drug or medication. And I thought, oh, God, that is so true. And we should really use it like that. Yeah, and a lot of people do. They don't think of it that way necessarily. But if you go to the gym and you've got your little gym mix, it gets you up and going, and that's good.

So that would be almost like a, let's say just by analogy, that would almost be like a pharmaceutical use. You've measured the dose. You've got the right dose for the right activity. But if you're just turning on the radio, the radio is taking through your past. There's that old girlfriend. There's that time I had that bad experience experience and you're just being jacked around. If it, if the only thing it did was exhaust you

emotionally, that's not good because you might need a little of that little energy later. So yeah, I, I, I treat, I treat music as a drug and I only administer it with very controlled doses of exactly what I need for the right situation but when you said that i thought you know who else said that a long time ago plato said that he said that really specifically yeah he he was he he was sort of a he was a totalitarian of sorts but one of the things he said you've got to expose the mind and he was talking about exposure to music and what it did to development. And he had lots of other crazy ideas about men of bronze and men of silver and all that stuff.

But I immediately thought of him and music because he brought that up. So I've been experimenting just the last week or so with the so-called binaural beats, where it's sort of a sound that some of them, and I don't believe all the claims that this version is too relaxing and this one makes you more creative or whatever, but I've been experimenting with it. And I can tell you that when I have it on, I can absolutely focus on my work in a way that I can't without it. I mean, it's very immediate and it's obvious. You know, If you listen to music with lyrics, I don't know how you can focus and do anything. Well, let me say this completely as a statement

with an absolute. If you've got a kid who's listening to music with lyrics while doing homework and they've talked you into that, that's not a kid who's learning efficiently because you can't do two things at one time. And even if you try to block out the lyrics, it's still there. So that's a really bad idea. I don't disagree with you, but I'd push back a little bit to say that a lot of times adolescents use music to manage anxiety. And in a way, the music and stuff is sort of an override

or sort of an expression sometimes of their angst, and it helps them with that, I think, although I can't have evidence. Does it? Or does it make it worse? It's a good question. I don't know. Because if you're in a sad mood, what kind of music do you play? Does a teenager who's sad play happy music to fix it? Probably not.

They probably say, oh, I'm in the mood for a sad song and then it's just worse yep could be i i think that that passes the sniff test it makes sense right so let's talk about loser things and what think i don't know why i want to put a plural on that but loser think and why what people can learn and and sort of how how persuasion works just a little primer if you don't mind so persuasionasion has many forms. So when I talk about persuasion, it's everything from hypnosis to selling to marketing to viral social media stuff. So it's all of that. And there are certain general rules that work across all those fields.

For example, visual persuasion is more powerful because our visual part of our brain just dominates. So if you can put a picture on something or even a word picture on something, it's stronger. So if you're talking about, let's say you want better immigration, a bad way to do it is, well, we'd like to do a variety of things in different ways in different places. And, you know, it will all come together. We'll talk to the experts. It'll all be fine. It doesn't grab you. But if you say, I want to build a wall. Well, you know, you don't want a wall, the entire, no, I want a wall. Just a wall, big, beautiful wall. You see it. It's simple. And then he repeats it. So the other part of persuasion is repetition.

There are lots of parts, but just a few. So if you've got visual, you're simple, and you're repeating it, you've got a strong package right there. That's already working. Now, some of the other things are just associating good things with the thing you want or bad things with the thing you want to discourage. Obviously, beer commercials have been doing that for years. Here's this great situation, and you're drinking this beer. So the beer must be good because the situation's good right so and you know of course there's how you word it what what thoughts come before other thoughts so it's a pretty it's pretty deep well what do you mean about that what do you mean what thoughts we're talking about that a little bit what thoughts well

i just mean it's complicated in the sense that the order that you say things can matter. So, for example, if you start a sentence, people focus on the first part of the sentence. So if you were to say, let's say it's going to be tough to come up with an example on the fly. Let's say, well, I'm not going to be able to come up with an example on the fly, but I might be able to think of one later. But the point is that people flush able to think of one later. The point is that people flush the last part of a sentence. Here's a good example. Homelessness in LA is a big problem, but really it's about addiction.

That's a non-persuasive statement. What people heard is homelessness, and then they think, well, they need a home. And they kind of tune out by the end of the sentence. And that's almost universal rule. Now, it doesn't mean they don't hear it. But if you want somebody to understand it and really get the point, you've got to pack that in the front. And especially if you've got a PowerPoint presentation, say, here's my point.

Now I'm going to tell you why. You've got to get that first. So it's just a thousand rules like that that you've got to get right. Is that what sometimes is associated with NLP, neurolinguistic processing? Is that the same thing? Well, NLP, neurolinguistic programming, is sort of a subfield of hypnosis. So some hypnotists did that. And I would call that more marketing than technique. I don't know what percent of NLP is valid and what isn't. I'm guessing 10% is valid. 90% is not going to hurt you.

It seems like sort of the Tony Robbins of the world do lots of that, it seems like to the sort of the tony robbins of the world do lots of that it seems like to me it's what my eye tells me is going on well tony robbins is also a very trained hypnotist so he's studied from the same the same uh let's say tree of hypnosis and then nlp and he actually studied directly from one of the nlp founders i believe that's that's his story so he got it directly from the source so when you watch tony rob, by the way, probably the best in the world, if he ran for office, unless he has some weird skeletons we don't know about, he would win any office. There's nobody who could even stand a chance against him. Now, I don't know why he doesn't want to run. It could have something to do with the fact that

his life is extraordinary and what he's doing is better and better for people too, because he's helping a lot of people. So I have complete high opinion of what Tony Robbins does. It's all valid. The pushback I would say is that I have all these people that claim, oh, it was so transformative for me. It was great and and i i don't see where they've applied or done anything i and i and they and they always say well give me six months and i'll show you six months go by and i was like what what's i know you felt like things were different but things are not different this is exactly the same what how what am i supposed to what should i do with that well you know if you try to help a 100 people what percent should you expect would have some enduring

you know change 30 you know if you had 100 people show up and you change the lives of 30 30 of them that would be pretty amazing uh because it's hard to change somebody's life now i gotta tell you you mentioned my how to fail almost everything and still Big book. I wrote that in 2013. And now a few years have gone by and I asked people to check in with me. Did you try any of that stuff? And I talk about having systems instead of goals, about building talent stacks primarily. And just dozens of people wrote to say it completely changed their life. And they gave real specific examples. i quadrupled my income i lost 80 pounds and consistently i'm hearing this across the board so there definitely are techniques that can change people but if i were to look okay for every 100 people who read my book what percentage of them changed their life

30 that'd be great but but that but that makes sense to me that it really, it's a how to, it's a, it's a, it's a guidebook. It's a, you know, it's something to be applied as opposed to an experience of motivation. I'm having a motivational experience. I'm going to change my life. I just don't put much, I don't know. I just put much credence in that. I don't see that changing. But how do you change your actions until you change your mind and your motivation? I mean, he starts at first principle, right? If you're not thinking right, you're not going to get it right. I mean, here's just the simplest thing that would be sort of Tony Robbins-like, which is that, and I use my own language for this, which is your brain has a certain amount of shelf space. And you get to decide, largely, you can't keep every thought out, but largely you get to decide what's on the shelf. And when the shelf is full, it's harder for other stuff to get on. So Tony Robbins and I,

and really anybody who'd studied anything in this field would say, fill the shelf. Don't let that shelf fill itself. You take control of the shelf. You put a happy thoughts there. And if there's some downtime, some bad stuff's going to creep in because the bad stuff comes in when you're not paying attention. So you have to manage actively the shelf, positive thoughts, and that will make you a positive person. People will want to be with you.

They'll want to hire you. They'll want to work with you. They'll trust you. Whole bunch of good stuff just comes out of that. I saw on Wikipedia that you went through a period where you were writing affirmations down 15 times a day. Is that a recommendation? So I write and talk about affirmations a lot, but the first thing I want to say, watch this technique. Here's my technique. The first thing you need to know is that I don't think there's any magic involved because that's where people's minds are going to go. So I use technique to erase that

first. I do think that focusing on a goal probably helps. There's a thing called reticular activation I learned about years ago. And it's the ability to hear something or filter things that are meaningful to you. So it's how you can hear your name in a crowded room. You know, the room is like, Scott. You're like, how can I hear that one word clearly? In fact, this happened to me in the street the other day. I was actually standing in front of a coffee shop.

Somebody recognized me. And I literally heard Scott Adams. You know, you probably thought that's the one word I couldn't hear. So it could be that you just notice opportunities. And if you look at a lot of famous people's paths, there are a few things that they have in common. They're working at something, they're focusing, they're expecting luck, because luck is actually, we can talk about that in a moment, but luck can be managed in an indirect way. I'll talk about that. But it could be that they just started noticing opportunities that they wouldn't have noticed.

That's certainly the case for me. Because you don't do something until you first notice that there's an opportunity and notice that it would make sense. So noticing is probably a really big part of it. Now, there's also a luck element. There was a researcher whose name I'll remember in a bit who studied luck and he wanted to find out if it exists. Is there such a thing as luck? And he put people in two groups and he said,

read this newspaper, count the number of photographs in the newspapers. Now he'd done other tests where they were trying to guess coin flips, and there was just no correlation. But he sorted the people into people who said they were lucky and people who said they weren't. And they said, do the same test, look at the newspaper, count up the number of photographs. The people who were not lucky, according to themselves, they considered themselves unlucky, counted the number of photographs, and let's say there were 42, and that was the right answer. Took them several lucky according to themselves they considered themselves unlucky counted the number of photographs and let's say there were 42 and that was the right answer took them several minutes to

do it but they got the right answer then the people who believed that they were lucky did the same task got 42 on average but they were done in seconds and the difference was that on page two of every newspaper in both groups in big words is said stop counting the photographs there are 42 oh and the the people who wake up every day and expect luck look for it notice so that was the finding right so your so your vision and your and your ability to notice things that are important to you actually can be expanded by focusing on what it is you wanted. Now, his finding was it didn't matter what method you used. Could have used affirmations. If you were religious, you could have prayed. You could have simply repeated it in your mind. But it was the act of the focus that actually

rewired your brain, essentially, and rewired it into a more efficient. I want a personal assessment i i feel like i'm unlucky but because i feel like i'm unlucky i try to pay careful attention to opportunities because they're they're i'm not going to get lucky you know what i mean i feel like i i'm like i think i would notice the the the thing in the newspaper but it wouldn't because i felt lucky because i feel unlucky, I'm paying careful attention. Dr. Chu, what the hell is wrong with you? That's my thing.

That's my deal. I mean, you're born healthy, good-looking, smart. You're talking to me in front of this national audience. I mean, how many people in this country would trade places with you? Do you really wake up and don't feel lucky? Is that a thing? I have low self-esteem and feel unlucky. Those are two things that I have. But I use them. I use them. They both,

like the low self-esteem makes me always check myself and make sure I'm doing the right thing. And if something goes wrong, I blame myself. And if something goes wrong because I don't feel lucky, I figure that's my thing. I don't feel bad about it if things don't go my way either. So it kind of works for me. Have you noticed that successful people have a demon? There's some kind of a demon. I mean, you just described yours. My demon is I don't know how to stop. So way early in my career, I said, if I ever make this amount of money and get that in the bank, I'm done.

I'm just going to enjoy life. I got that amount of money. I want to stop you because Mrs. Pinsky is laughing out loud behind the camera here, because evidently I have the same problem. So yes, yes, yes. So whatever it is that makes a person strive, you know, take a risk and really work hard. You know, I worked every day for 10 years when I was getting things going, whatever that is, I thought I could turn it off once I got what I wanted, but it doesn't work that way. It's completely independent of your success. So my demon is that I was born hungry and I can't turn it off. So the best thing I can do, and I see you doing the same thing, is I can't satisfy my hunger, but I can turn it toward

ways that maybe will help other people. I see you doing that every day. Exactly. But because I love doing that so much, that adds to the can't turn it off. It's so rewarding that it adds to the can't turn it off. But it's so meaningful. How many people are doing anything as meaningful as what we're doing, really? No, I am. really no i i am well doctors in general but that's what i i feasted on that for many years you know taking care of lots of patients and uh was always grateful for that because uh i would run into people who were having trouble with that same issue but didn't really do anything for other humans and i and they'd be hugely successful and go now now what am i supposed to do and i go

i think to myself i kind of got that part down i kind of doing something all the time that i think is worthwhile and that's something for people to know i think it's another thing is i feel like that was kind of addressed in loser think wasn't it about uh service well i've talked about a perfect life so my description of a perfect life is you're born as a baby and you're 100% selfish because you have to be. You can't take care of yourself. Maybe you become a kid. You can help out around the house a little bit. Maybe babysit your younger sibling. By the time you're maybe a parent, you're giving more than you're getting to your job and your spouse and your kids. And then a perfect life is you get to my age and beyond, and you've sort of got everything you need. And you just turn your focus down to the world and say, what do you guys need? What can I do for you? That would be a perfect world. Now, I got my money relatively early in my life. So I got to start a little bit earlier. It doesn't matter when you start, you should die perfectly selflessly. Your last act in your mortal body is to give it all away, which is beautiful.

Really, everything that you've learned by now, you and I have an advantage because we create this body of work that we'll live on. We're giving it, but it stays out there so people can read it, see it. But your final act is you give up everything you've acquired in your bodily life. And there's something beautiful about that. I agree. But I would argue that one thing people miss, there's something about more one-on-one kind of giving. Aristotle wrote about this. He said, if you have a skill and wisdom, those are the two things you need. And we leave that out a lot because people just want to go give service.

But you have to be able to give of some part that really is meaningful, and that usually involves skill and wisdom. And it's usually in space with another human being that it's most meaningful. It doesn't happen. They're all different. So if I had, let's say, if i had the empathy gene where i could be a nurse let's say that would be great and i would find great meaning in that but i don't have that gene i have something closer to whatever the hell bill gates has which is if i work really hard and maybe i'll be a bastard for a while but watch what i do next like that was always his plan

early on bill gates said i'm not making this money for me. I'm making a ton of money. Then I'm going to turn my second part of my life to philanthropy. I don't think anybody believed it because he was saying that pretty young. And he said it consistently. And then best philanthropist of all time. And I would argue that had been the American way for a long time. And we've sort of lost track of that a bit. And that's an important model. been the American way for a long time, and we've sort of lost track of that a bit.

And that's an important model. Let me take a call here that is something that you and I have talked a little bit about, maybe we can get into a bit. It is Elijah. Elijah, thank you for waiting. Go ahead. Hi, Dr. Drew. Thanks for taking my call.

You bet. Excuse me. Hi, Scott. Big fan of the Periscope man. Congratulations on your, your engagement. Thank you. I appreciate it. Forgot to say that.

Yes. I appreciate that. Hey, Dr. Drew, I was going to ask you, Oh, by the way, I'm also a big fan of love lines since way back and also some of your more recent work with folks over at your mom's house. Oh yeah, the After Dark program. Thank you. Absolutely. Dr. Dark and the Robert Paul Champagne

interview that you did. Oh, there is a tour coming that's going to blow your mind. I've seen it and it's going to be another gift to those listeners. So thank you. That's fantastic um so Dr. Drew I saw you uh on a like a news talk show a week or two ago I think it was the Greg Gutfeld show and you were you were sort of talking about your frustration with the homelessness homelessness problem and uh your frustration with the homelessness problem and your frustration with the politicians.

And you just kind of threw it out there that you could run against Adam Schiff since you live in Adam Schiff's district. And I was wondering, are you serious about that? Right. And I guess since we got Scott here too, Scott, I'd love to hear your opinion on if Dr. Drew ran for public office, what are his chances of winning? Okay. So let me answer your question.

That is that I wake up every day disturbed about this homeless problem. And for the last maybe six months, I keep thinking, oh, my God, I'm going to have to get into politics to change this because I have to. Something's got to change. And people started swirling around me trying to get me to look into mayor of Los Angeles, which is a job I would not like. That does not look like a good job to me. That city council, forget it. I don't know what the mayor can do even. And then somebody started saying you should run for governor in California. So I started looking at that. And then I was watching all the impeachment stuff going, oh my God, we are such a mess here in California, and they're just caught up in this, and what is it going to do for the people of this country?

And then I started thinking, hey, that Schiff guy, I've seen his name around where I live, found out I live and have lived for almost my whole life in his district. And I thought, oh, my God, I may have to run for that office. I might have to do that just to make a point but I don't really want to uh so I've been floating it out there uh Elijah uh and I'm gonna have Scott answer your question in a second and we have two other good candidates also right Scott we have two other people running for that office that I don't want to sabotage either but go go ahead. Have at it. Let me put it this way.

If you primaried him and ran as a Democrat, you would kick his ass. I don't think it would be close. I think you could take him out as a Democrat. What about an independent? I don't see a lot of independents winning. It seems so rare that it seems tough to you know unless you're a jesse ventura well you're better than a jesse ventura so maybe maybe you would be an exception yeah i think you'd have to be a household name so you've got that going for

you um it would be harder i think it would be hard okay so i because i've been a democrat much of the time i go you know you can change your in california you can change your registration every 10 minutes if you want so just to prove a point i've sometimes done that i've sometimes just gone just going online and change and change and change democrat independent yeah i mean libertarian and i've been lots of different things because i think the whole thing is so stupid uh and because i am independent and i am seeing both movies constantly, and by the way, seeing both movies is not so fun either. I'd almost rather see one of them

because I have to go to your periscope to calm down after watching both movies and try to figure out what's going on. But again, I could easily be a Democrat, no problem. I have no problem with some of the Democratic policies. I think it's a strong message to anybody who's changed parties at least once.

I always prefer a candidate who knows what it was like on that other side. Maybe they're over here for a while, but you know that they didn't forget. They didn't forget how the other side thinks. I always thought that that was one of Trump's advantages. I think Mike Bloomberg had that advantage running for mayor as well. Some other folks have had that as well. Now, you've had in the past have said you like Bloomberg as a candidate. Are you still interested in him? I like Mike Bloomberg, which is different than liking him as a candidate. And there was a time

that I thought I liked him for president. I'm not crazy about people of that age in charge of the country. So to me, it's an age thing. And I have the same concerns about Trump in the second term, but he's got at least a few years on some of those guys. So mostly his age, and I think he's showing his age, and he's also not shown, I'll say, presidential game. If you've seen his Twitter feed and his ads and stuff they're they're super weak you you particularly uh i saw you taking aim at a subway picture which had a big don't sign over his head and there was some other message to his to his left side that was sort of weirdly negative is that is that what you were seeing in that picture? Yeah.

So he's doing this man of the people thing. So the first thing he did was tweet a horrible photograph of a big room full of cubicles. And he was just a little dot in it. It was probably, probably his mayor days. And you look at that and you say to yourself, okay, is that presidential?

Cause you know, he's trying to be, well, I will be in a cubicle or I'll be in an open office if I become president. And I'm thinking to myself, don't want that. Do not want that. By the way, he said he wanted to turn the East Room into that. Have you ever been in the East Room? It's like it's a museum. I mean, it's really, it's an art museum. The greatest portraits of all the presidents are in the East Room and it's a breathtaking room to use for

ceremony. I just think the American public, they're okay with their CEO having casual day. They're okay with their mayor being a little bit flexible. Maybe they'd be okay with a governor, but probably not. A president, you need to come at a president like you're the brand, like you're the country's brand. And the brand of the United States is not you sitting in a big open office in your blue jeans.

That's not the brand. I don't think that helps us. So I think he's completely disconnected from what the average person is thinking about the presidency. I want to bring Mrs. Pinsky in for a second. Did you shudder at what Scott said about running for Schiff's office? Because she's been one of my – she's been a concerned advocate. Well, it's better than governor.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because we'd rather live in Washington than Sacramento. I support you, honey. Okay. I'm registered Democrat. Well, you might get one vote there. I need a campaign manager, Scott. I need some persuasion technique. Registered Democrat. Well, you might get one vote there. Campaign manager, Scott.

I need some persuasion technique. I'm going to need a lot of help if we actually go do this. Well, I got to tell you, you have lots of powerful, let's say, friends on social media. And you would be an extraordinary force. I mean, you would move the needle. I mean, you could change as much by losing the race as you could by winning because you would introduce a whole new set of ideas. I mean, I think you have the ability to change things. Not many people have that ability. If I could get him to govern, I would feel good about it.

You know what I mean? I would feel like, oh, mission accomplished. Somebody is governing for a change as opposed to letting this free-for-all go down here in California. Let's wrap up, if you don't mind. Oh, there was something I wrote down because, oh, I know what it was, which was this was also another big day.

And I'm curious why persuasion, maybe the Soleimani thing drowned it all out. Am I getting his name right? Soleimani, am I saying that correctly? I say it differently every time so i'm gonna say yes okay i and i apologize for not getting it right but but um the rape kit story was also something that went down i believe today or yesterday and that's a i mean i've been worried about that for literally years and in a swipe of the pen it it's taken away just if people don't know this we have millions of backlog rape kit rape kits in this country that are now i think

a hundred thousand hundred thousand all right it's a hundred thousand whatever it is there's they're people's i i don't know how to to to frame, except it's outrageous that people have been violated in this way and left essentially to rot. Really violated twice. Right, exactly. Exactly. And now we're going to go do this. I'm going to take care of it. I'm hoping it's going to go the way I think it's going to, which is it's not a big deal.

If they have the money to do it, they'll do it in rapid order and these cases can be pursued why isn't that being shouted from every mountaintop is it the other story of drowning it out it's well it's partly that and it's partly because it's a perfect um it's one of these perfect things you know both democrats and republicans voted for it The president signed it. Good luck finding anybody on this planet who thinks it's a bad idea. So you've got a big part of the media who just doesn't want to talk about it. And maybe the other part's a little busy with the Iran stuff. But if you think about the fact that 100,000 people might find some peace, and by the way, if you're saying to yourself, well, identifying the DNA doesn't mean you know who the perpetrator was, but guess what's changing?

There's so much DNA of your family members on genealogical sites and various places that today we have the technology to say, all right, we don't know exactly who you are, but I found your cousin. Hey, cousin, do you know anybody who lives in Auburn? Yeah, brother Bob. Then you're done yeah and that's already happening they can go forward which is they've been completely and I think rot is the right word they've just been rotting and that's what that's how it feels like these women have been left to just to remain it would be hard to think of any president who's done more for women recently i mean what would you have to go back to before i mean this is one of the biggest things that has ever benefited women period and men we'll see how

it how it goes down um a quick question somebody had online they got rejected from grad school what what is your advice 33 year old rejected from grad school so dreams are dashed what's the opposite of what's the non-loser think way of approaching that well of course the details matter you know is it something that if you reapply to some other school you can get in then then go ahead is it the last time you've tried you know why you didn't get uh didn't get in so that really all turns entirely upon the details but i will tell you that why you didn't get in? So that really all turns entirely upon the details. But I will tell you that if you continue building your talent stack, you're going to be great. So if you find ways to just increase your talent over time, you will become more valuable,

whether it's that specific path or not. And we live in a world where we have almost infinite paths. A lot of them are good. What are the odds that that one thing you needed, you thought you needed that degree from that school, what are the odds that that was the main thing that made your life good or bad? Probably not high. The one thing, yeah. So make another plan. And are we living in a day when the generalist or broadly trained individuals are going to be emphasized again?

Is that part of what the expanded talent stack is telling us? What do you say? Yeah. You know, in days of old, if you had a boss and a cubicle and here's your job and fill this out and put this here this here then you don't you don't need much skill you just need to be able to do that one thing but if you take anybody who's an entrepreneur you know who's got a startup starting any kind of a business they are almost always generalists at least the ones that succeed so they're going to need to you know be a little bit okay or to learn it quickly this whole range of everything from selling to marketing to 15 levels of technology i'm involved with a startup called wenhub and when you see the um my

my cto nick has more skills in one person than you've ever seen in your life i mean it's just ridiculous how much he knows about how many things from blockchain to every technology. It's just crazy. So that's the kind of person who's going to be moving the world. It's the people who have at least okay understanding of a whole bunch of things. Yeah, I've always been fearful of the hammer nail diathesis, you know, which is if you're a hammer, the whole world's a nail. So if you're too narrowly trained, your judgment's not quite where it should be it's not uh that's actually the point yeah yeah that's the point of loser think which is if you've at least sampled

economic psychology history engineering if you've if you've at least sampled those things you might be able to look into the house from different windows. And today, when you have podcasting that addresses all of these things, it's so easy to do that or great courses or whatever it is. You used to have to go somewhere to find these things. Now it's at our fingertips. That may have more massive consequence. Jordan Peterson keeps saying this, that that phenomenon may have more consequence than we know yeah and if you put the two conversations together there's that plus virtual reality right now watching a an instructor drone on on video is worse than being in there in person but when you go to vr it's way better than in person it It's not even close. You're talking about 10x more effective in learning and interest and just everything.

So, you know, as soon as VR hits that price point, here's what you're going to see. Instead of an instructor who knows their subject, you're going to see a Hollywood teams form where there's a director, a producer, there's an on-air talent who's just good at talking. There's a graphic design people. There editing there's there's all that and then you're going to see you know a course in geometry that you'll want to take for fun right you'll be inside it you'll be inside it right um you know so imagine taking a history course and it plops you in the middle of you know napoleon's battle oh my god i mean that's the sort of thing that's coming. Yeah. And then you, because, again, because of the reach of all this,

you have extraordinary teachers available, like the guy, Khan from Khan Academy, and people that are just extraordinary at getting things across to people. Let's wrap. Go ahead. Finish. The difference between the best teacher in the world and one who's pretty good that's a

huge difference and once we get once they those best teachers are in vr and everybody can watch it it's all new world so let's let's end up with a couple predictions here because again this is you this is where i learned to you calm me down once you start predicting things because your predictions have been always very very positive in spite of the world feeling like it's unraveling um i don't know where to start with the predictions what's on your mind what what i mean we have a situation with iran that's making me nervous uh we have an impeachment proceeding that's upsetting we have a a giant a huge election and some primaries coming up what what What do you make of all that? I would say that the interesting thing about the potential for war with Iran is that you've never seen two countries who want war less than we do.

Is there anybody who wants war less than Iran? I mean, war with the United States. Is there anything we want less than a war with Iran? Nothing. So I would say the odds of getting into like a boots in the ground war is close to zero because you at the minimum you'd have to have somebody who wants it you know if everybody doesn't want it you're not going to get there now will they punch what would you say to people that are worried about mr trump being impulsive or somehow you know personally invested in whatever uh response comes our way anything to that Yeah, the impulsive thing is just sort of

ridiculousness because people don't know what thought process went into it. I mean, if somebody comes to a good decision quickly, was it impulsive? If they thought about it for three days and nobody knows about it, but when there's time to make the decision, they said, oh yeah, we're going to do this, but nobody knows the thought process, is that that impulsive if it's somebody who's so experienced that they know only one variable is going to matter and all the rest is just noise and they know what that one variable is and they say oh well this one variable we got to do x that's the only thing that makes sense is that impulsive there's no way to judge people's inner mind. You can't read his mind and say, oh, I saw there was no thought that happened before the thing. It's not real.

Brains don't work that way. There's always thought. You're predicting not war, at least. I'm predicting that we will see a range of ambiguous acts against American interests or our allies that we will not be entirely sure what was behind it, such as the Kenya badness. People said, oh, maybe Iran. And then the al-Shabaab said, no, not Iran. It was just us. So you're probably going to see some more of that. But my prediction is that we are closer to peace than we have ever been before. I'm talking about the whole Middle East. Think about it. We're down to one person who has to change their mind, and he's got a good reason to do it, the Ayatollah. If he changes his mind, the entire, the proxies, everything becomes

neutralized, at least less of a problem. It's just one guy now. Have we ever been to a point where only one person has to change their mind and there's peace in the Middle East? I don't think so. And is he at a point where he might be flexible? My theory is that he was never in charge. My theory is that the guy who runs the military and has the loyalty of the military is effectively in charge. And I don't think that guy wanted peace. So I think we may have done a bit of a solid, even though, you know, Iran may not treat it that way, but we may have removed the only obstacle to peace that there was is the Ayatollah. Sure. He wants to,

you know, spread his revolution, et cetera, but you know, we have the internet now. He has another way to do it. And, uh And I would like to encourage Iran to trust their God. Literally, trust your God. Take it to the Internet. And if your ideas with God's help can't convince people, I'm pretty sure blowing their limbs off isn't going to do a better job. So stop using the bad weapon from the past because it's completely appropriate Islamic thinking and practice to improve your weapons. And right now, the internet is just a far better weapon. And I think that that's dawning on them. So if we can get them to make that change to say, let's keep the fight up forever if you want, but it's going to be a war of ideas. We're going to have to persuade you that's the better weapon now. And then how about the election coming up?

Can you tell us anything yet? Landslide Trump, unless something big changes, you know, and of course something big changes every other day. So any projection about anything in the Trump world is ridiculous because it just turns into something else by tomorrow. But if nothing big changed, it should be a landslide. I don't see anybody who's competitive with him at this point. Interesting. Well, Scott, the Periscope is available. Just look for Scott Adams on Periscope, right? Is that all you have to do? I've been signed up for a while. Yeah, you can just Google my name on Periscope and I'll pop right up. And then the website is dilbert.com and twitter is at scott adam says scott it's always fascinating to talk to you and i appreciate your willingness to come on the show and all the

other things that i've dragged you into i i really do appreciate it and uh i hope you have a happy new year congratulations on your uh engagement and uh i think. And I hope you have a happy new year. Congratulations on your engagement. And I think that's pretty exciting. You have a date yet? No, no. One step at a time. All right. We'll figure that out.

Thank you, Dr. Drew. Who did you hear practicing the piano, by the way, when we were getting started here? I love that. That was Christina, my fiancee. Tell her. Tell her. Keep at it. Keep at it.

It sounded great so i did uh so again thank you scott again thank you caleb and susan our producers and lindsey for call screening and then we've got michelle of course who did our our all the stuff behind me thank the callers because we had to let them go yeah callers i apologize i couldn't get to everybody uh it's always that's my regret on this show we get lots of great calls and we just i just can't get to everybody but please do keep calling that's my regret on this show. We get lots of great calls and we just, I just can't get to everybody. But please do keep calling in or send in your questions at dotru.com slash contact. And I'll try, if I can get the emails, I can try to answer them that way. And again, we are doing a daily dose every day, pretty much every day.

Susan, I'm not quite sure how next week's going to work. As long as I can hold out. Okay. We get in here and we just turn the cameras on for about 20 minutes or so every noon Pacific time. And I see the questions on the Periscope and Facebook scroll and I try to answer those. You're copying Scott. Yeah, I'm copying Scott a little bit. Except Scott talks about what's in the news for the whole time and doesn't do the questions until the end.

And I generally talk the questions most of the time, and then maybe a little thought about what I'm seeing in the news. So again, Scott, appreciate it very much. And I'll talk to you again soon. All right. Thanks so much.

Take care. And I'll see you all next time. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. Today's call screener is Lindsay K. Floyd. Thanks for subscribing to the podcast. If you have a question,

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