Decoding the Gurus - Scott Adams: Chris and Matt Go to Hell

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has since written self-help books like 'Win Bigly' & 'Loserthink' and now hosts his own podcast "Coffee with Scott Adams".In mild-mannered, folksy, and avuncular style, he has a 'simultaneous sip' of coffee, a little chuckle with his listeners, and then they chat about the events of the day and how democracy is a farce and maybe a benevolent dictatorship would be preferable.Scott's fatherly advice is geared towards one thing: undermining your belief that there is any truth or justice in world - or that these things are even possible. You can trust literally nobody. All systems are corrupt, and the world works through the exercise of naked power and the manipulation of gullible rubes like you.It doesn't even matter if the libs stole the election. Trump should just go ahead and take it, if he can.Scott Adams considers himself a Master Persuader and he uses every rhetorical trick in the book to persuade you that America is so corrupt to try and get you to agree that a benevolent dictator would probably be preferable at this point.Think of the kind of 'helpful advice' that Wormtongue used to demoralise Théoden in Lord of the Rings.It's really horrible...So, if this sounds like fun to you, join Chris and Matt as they go to hell and become increasingly depressed throughout the episode!LinksCoffee with Scott Adams Episode 1197: Odds of rigging an election and getting away with it (Part 1 & Part 2)Coffee with Scott Adams Episode 1206: Watch Me Monetize My Dumbest Critics While Discussing the Election Allegations. Thank You, Critics! (Part 1 & Part 2)

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus. It's the podcast where us, two academics, listen to content from the online world and we try to decode them, figure out what they're talking about. So I'm Matt Brown. I'm a professor in Australian University and with me is Chris. Hi, Chris. Hello, Matt. Hello.

I just thought I'd break up the intro by getting you involved. And you are, he is also an academic in Japan so we are going to do our usual thing and decode Andrew so we've been given some shit about our accents Chris some some people say nice things about it but also in a kind of backhanded kind of way apparently you just ramble on in unintelligible brogue and I go yeah mate yeah mate vegemite good on you that's not what i heard i i i heard that it was you who were unintelligible and i have a lilting irish accent that made anyone who hear it swoon for miles around yes this is the ideological blinkering we hear so much about this is what you've got going on.

I also heard a conspiracy theory that we are, in fact, the same person just putting on different voices. That would be impressive if somebody could actually manage that, you know, to sort of have your kind of dark energy and my laid-back Aussie charm in the same person. That would be weird. Yeah, and it would be super meta if it was true and we were actually doing it and having this conversation about it.

Okay, so let's get into it. Today, so we're going to be looking at Scott Adams, who I didn't know much about before, but he absolutely is a guru. He definitely does have deep, deep takes on a lot of things he's a bit conspiratorial and he writes self-help books um so yeah he definitely hits all the guru buttons yeah i think i'll issue a spoiler up front that we've we've looked at people some of them are like extremely irritating like jpc springs to mind. And in other cases, the rhetorical techniques are a little bit frustrating at times to delve into. So I think it is some achievement that Scott Adams is by far the person that I have disliked the most that we've covered. And I'm really going to

struggle to say anything nice about him because he's such an asshole. I'm sorry. I know this is the ad hominem sin up front, but I'm just going to say he's an asshole. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Matt. I'm just going to say he's an asshole. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Matt. That's okay. That's okay. Look, I'm with you on this one.

Like, I think one of the things I'm proud of is that people do say that we are kind of even-handed and talk about the positives and the negatives. But, yeah, we don't have much good to say about it. So it's good to just get that out of the way up front. Like, we'll detail why. And I'll do our best to deal man his position but yeah it's just a terrible person it's hard it's hard you'll see you'll see everyone um but anyway before we get into scott we got a little bit of housekeeping to go through so let's start off with our state of the gurus roundup chris you got a few points here i think yeah i ritgo bregman as far as i have seen is not up to much or at least uh he's not tweeting much uh same same difference on our account but jordan peterson was announced that

he's releasing another book i think it's another 12 Rules for Life or like a follow-up to that with Penguin. And it was met with some consternation amongst some Penguin employees who were reported as breaking down and crying and being upset at a meeting because of disagreeing with his views and thinking that Penguin shouldn't be profiting from

his kind of ideology you have any thoughts matt i have some but uh yeah look i i didn't i didn't look at it closely and i don't know what the sick the sequel to 12 rules is about i presume it's more of the same and i don't i don't think it's anything that anyone needs to cry about um i don't it's i'm almost certain it's not a terribly harmful book that needs to be stopped to save civilization but you know it's it's the usual um storm in a teacup isn't it you have the new stories about a lot of people getting upset about that and then a lot of people getting upset that other people are upset and um probably there's other people getting upset about those people being upset about those people being upset.

That's probably me. That's probably you, yeah. Yeah, I think that's my general response as well. I don't think it's worth getting that upset about Jordan Peterson having another book, even though I'm not a big fan of his work. But I just, I don't think it's that much of an issue. But I also don't mind if you want to get upset about it, go ahead. I find it more frustrating that we have to have this, this big debate about some people being upset and what does that mean? And is this censorship?

If this book was not being published, if the employees had got it pooled, then fine. But like they haven't as far as I've seen. So what we're talking about is just, okay, some people weren't happy that their employees are publishing the book and they expressed that. And that's it. Like, why do I care?

I don't, I literally don't care about this event you know what i mean but yeah it uh it seems to have done the news cycle so yeah like you say getting people getting annoyed about people getting annoyed about people getting annoyed it's a irritating cycle it's exhausting isn't it it's exhausting how does that trope go i forget i don't know that's a very very insightful you've added there i was just actually while you're speaking i was just thinking of that uh of that meme which i really like which is you know the this the scene from the movie the fugitive where somebody's got harrison ford i think cornered in a sewer and and he gives him this great big spiel about him being innocent and all that stuff

and he he says i don't i don't care yeah i don't care yeah i don't care yeah i think that's a i that's a great meme and i want to use that for so many things now because yeah there was there is there is a gif of that so you you can have your dream it's within your grasp all right i'm gonna i'm gonna find something on twitter and then reply to it with that um okay you know back to the state of the gurus eh yeah so one other thing that happened that was quite funny was that uh james lindsey's twitter rampage continues and he he went off on uh just a short rant took a screenshot or shared someone's article and basically accused him of wanting to burn books but it turned out he misread the article which which was actually arguing the opposite and was written by somebody who had,

an author who had won the Orwell Prize, which is given to people, you know, fighting for freedom of speech and that kind of thing. And when the author pointed this out to James and said, you know, maybe don't be so quick to jump the gun, they said it harsher than that but his response was something like yeah okay you don't need to be such a fucking bitch about it classic james so you know just never never retreat never admit you you know if you made a mistake you should be annoyed at the other person yeah just be as insulting and derogatory as possible this is this is how to have an impossible

conversation i guess like literally if you want to make conversation impossible um act like that yeah yeah uh so i i mean i think this will be a consistent occurrence. So maybe we won't update on this every month, but just to say, James is still being a dick on Twitter. That's the summary. That's right. But don't amplify this stuff, Chris. Don't platform it any more than it already is. It's too late, Matt. We've done it. We've done it. That's really what our podcast is about we are doing it now

we are giving more space to all these terrible things that don't deserve space but c'est la vie that's what it is one other one to mention was that our friend and special guru in our hearts, Eric Weinstein, released

another audio essay. We did a detailed breakdown of one of them, but this one is an hour long. So if we do a detailed breakdown of it, it will probably take us like a week to go through it. But it's pretty remarkable. It is another, you know, masterpiece of both ciderism, obscurantism, and the way I would frame it, which is not how Eric or his fans would frame it, is basically presenting fairly standard right-leaning positions and takes and framing them as if they are these never before heard, unheralded opinions that cannot be found in mainstream discourse and which completely break

the fabric of our duopolistic media narrative. And yeah, it's just, it's a sight to behold. But he does talk about you know he responds to sam harris trying to disown the intellectual dark web and basically says that he can't because it's because it's like the hotel california and you can check out anytime you want but you can never leave oh dear yeah oh good well yeah i think it's hard to resist. I know you're very tempted. We're both tempted to go back and return to Eric. On one hand, I want the seminary gurus to get to, and I don't want this to be a focus on any one particular person.

On the other hand, yeah, Eric Weinstein is an airbender of this stuff. He's just amazing. Yeah. He's the gift that keeps on giving like i i genuinely think he's a person in the conspiracy guru space who is offering a newly like it's still all the old same conspiracy and same old rhetoric but it's packaged in this novel new bow well well, for me, the interesting thing about him is unlike people like Scott Adams, who we're going to talk about today, who to a large degree is just a straightforward political partisan.

So, and as such is not super interesting. Eric is interesting because he is just purely, purely guru. You know, he's not, he's not primarily about, in my opinion, about partisanship or about pushing a particular ideological line, but he seems to me to be purely about acting and the image of a guru and convincing people that he's a guru seems to be his primary impetus, which makes him really interesting because he's pure and refined in a way that a lot of these other people aren't. Yeah. The one pushback against that I would give is that I, I tend to agree that like the overriding motivation is how intelligent Eric is and his takes, but I will say that his contrarian streak has a fairly predictable quality to it, right?

Like when it comes to voter election conspiracies, he basically wants to say, you dismissing people for that, that's actually you being close-minded and narrow. But he can't be so straightforward to just say that the mainstream allegations of fraud are true. So he needs to find like, you know,

a kind of hipster way to make contrarian arguments. And it means that he has to find like, you know, a kind of hipster way to make contrarian arguments. And it means that he he has his novel takes, but they're they're all fairly much in line ideologically where you would expect him to go. Eric was tweeting about how he gets a much warmer reception from like Tucker Carlson and those kind of people than he does from, you know, CNN or so on. And, and I wonder why, I really wonder why, because him and his friends spend most of their time complaining about the left and arguing that Trump isn't as bad as people claim. And this, it's, it's very hard to tell why they would be more receptive to that kind of message. Yep, that's true too. No disagreement there. So let's move on and do a few shout-outs, hey, Chris? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I might start with Two Psychologists, Four Beers, a longstanding psychology podcast, and these guys have been very supportive of us and have tweeted nice things about us and also shared this out on a recent episode. So I wanted to say thank you for that. Yes, that's right.

Although I'm going to give the credit to Mickey. I haven't heard super prayers coming from you all. So let's not give credit where it's at. Yeah, what's up with you all? But no, I really like Two Psychologists, Four Beers, and I follow Mickey and UL, and they're both good follows, and the podcast is a good one to listen to. So yeah, I endorse your shout out. And I have my own to offer.

So one thing I forgot in the previous weeks is I meant to mention that Evolving Moloch on Twitter was kind enough to share an essay that he had written about Rutger Bregman reviewing his book critically. And it was, it agreed with most of the points that we independently had kind of reached, but it, but it was very helpful to read because he, you know, had read the book and I meant to give a shout out during the Rick Bregman episode and forgot. So excellent. Good. Yeah. Evolving Moloch on Twitter is a good person to follow if you like anthropology stuff as well. Yeah. I follow him. He's great. Um, we have some other shout outs on the list I'm looking at in front of me. Um, we wanted to make, but we won't do them all at once. We'll save them for future episodes, won we so yeah so if you didn't hear your name maybe

it's you next week look at that you won't know unless you tune in uh good okay so that's done what are we doing next reviews reviews because we solicited them and only fair that we should cover some of them. I also have more breaking news for you, Matt, about the ongoing success of the podcast. And that is we broke another top 100. So we're still in the top 100 in Iceland. That's good. And I had some Icelandic listeners reach out and basically claim responsibility because you only need about three or four people. But still, we're actually currently 24th in the Icelandic society and culture chart. So there you go. It's number one.

Icelandic listeners, we can do this. Let's get to number one. We just need four more people. But Matt, this is the news that I don't know how you're going to react to this because of your deep national rivalry. But we're in the top 100 in New Zealand in society and culture. Oh, that makes me very happy. I am, I'm a fan of New Zealand. I think maybe they should be incorporated into Australia.

I like them so much. I love hearing that. Yeah, no, that's great. I'm happy fan of New Zealand. I think maybe they should be incorporated into Australia. I like them so much. I love hearing that. Yeah, no, that's great. I'm happy. Yeah. Oh, wait, no, sorry. It's fake news. It's fake news.

Because I've just realized I've read the little chart thing wrong. And it actually says it's not a rank. We're out of the top 100 or 200. And it says the change is that we are down 70 so we might have broke the top 200 for like a day and then we dropped 70 so so sorry big news for you i don't get too excited yeah what a letdown what a letdown god yeah build me up and then you knock me down again roller coaster ride and that's i'm sorry matt um and we have to tone down the anti-new zealand rhetoric that's yeah yeah

ireland is the one with the sheep gig okay new zealanders that's our thing you you you you stick to your quasi australianness-ness. No. So two reviews. That's the usual thing that we do. And sticking with the New Zealand theme, we have a review from New Zealand. It's a five-star review. Very good. And it says, nice intro music, but otherwise, this podcast is the condensed dribble that seeps out of a trash bag after fermenting for a few days in the rotting material of a left-wing echo chamber.

Oh, that's excellent. Great. Is that it? Is there any more? No, that's it. That's it. So there's two possibilities here. Either this is a genuine criticism and somebody just clicked the wrong reading button.

Or EP350 is the person. I don't think that's their name though. But they have followed our instructions or your instructions from previous weeks and given a positive review with negative text. Great. So yeah, Elo A, it was entertaining. So thank you very much, EP350. Thank you.

That's right. The most awful, most critical reviews get the airtime. They get the shout out. Yeah, that's right. That's right. We're doing this wrong. No, Matt, what has happened that I give one good review and one negative review? So that's the negative one for this week.

All right. So now I will give you the positive review. So this is the other way to get a shout out. Just fawning praise. Fawning praise. That's it. Okay. So the title of this one,

and this one is from Australia, Matt. It might be a family member. It may not. We shall find out. It's from Quad Zeus, which is a good name. I quite like that. Favorite new podcast of 2020. Good start. Five stars. This is easily my favorite podcast in a long time. Good job. It is

generally an excellent section of the claims made by many public intellectuals with some humor thrown in to stop you from falling asleep. I'm definitely looking forward to the eventual episode where Chris and Matt decode themselves. That would be meta. That would be very meta. Yeah. This has been requested several times. It's probably going to have to happen at some point

where we decode our own episode, which will be very upsetting. But the thing I wanted to highlight in this review is, again, I think we've got a nag, another nag, that there's some humor in to stop you from falling asleep. What does that suggest? It's a bit backhanded, isn't it? Yeah. This is like saying we barely keep people away with our monotonous, relentless, We barely keep people awake with our monotonous, relentless, repetitious criticism. But then we occasionally throw a bad joke in and that keeps people awake.

This negging has got to stop, right? Pure positive. Pure positive. That's it. I'm worried that it might be some way accurate. And I'm also concerned that sooner or later somebody is going to decode us and we'll be we'll be hoist by our own petard and everything will get thrown back at us so we'll have to we'll have to we'll have to be on our best behavior well when you upset me enough i will fly inside of this and start my own podcast and start just taking you apart that will that

will meet the listeners request and and and be an enjoyable adventure for both of us as well. So there you go, Matt. Something to look forward to. Well, if you do that, then I'll start my own podcast as soon as I can find someone else to do most of the work. Then you'll be in trouble.

Well, things to look forward to. More podcasts to come. This does remind me, just very offhand, that there was someone in one of Eric's Discord that claimed they were going to launch several podcasts, including one dedicated to taking us down. So I didn't really trust them to see through because, you know, having launched just one, I really don't think you're going to do that.

But, you know, maybe. Yeah, it's actually quite a lot of work, isn't it? Relatively speaking, which actually brings us to our next topic, which is to – Good segue, Matt. Good segue. That's actually our first segue that we've ever done. So it's the dreaded P word. P-hacking.

No, not P-hacking. There's no money in that. Not P-hacking. Okay. Well, there's no not, Matt. Okay. Okay. Well, it's not Matt, is it? Okay. So look, long story short,

Chris has looked at what he's been charged to host Helpline Park and has realized that it's not free. We've spent a few hundred bucks, I guess, Australian bucks, probably. Well, yeah. Don't pull the curtain back too much matt but yeah we we have decided that you know now that we've uh built up our massive icelandic audience that we now want to monetize them and and become the millionaire culture warriors that we were always destined to become yes we're gonna start a patreon patreon so the plan is to quit our our cushy academic jobs and to rely entirely on patreon support so yeah we've got high hopes yeah so it's a it's definitely a winning formula the this is not a niche podcast uh that the that

would be impossible to live off at all so So what are we doing a Patreon for? So like Matt has hinted at, the main reason is to try and make sure that we just break even. I think that's a reasonable goal that the podcast doesn't actually cost us money. And that wouldn't require that much. So I think that's a decent goal.

But do we have anything to offer in return, Matt, or any plans? Or is this purely a cynical money grab? Okay, well, we did talk about this, didn't we? We thought we would... This was another segue, Vlad. This was a segue for the pitch. The pitch. I hadn't prepared a pitch don't say that you can tell we're definitely going to be very good at monetizing our uh reeking in people with uh this this level of professionalism um yeah sorry continue on continue on okay what can we offer well we did have some ideas about that. Apart from having that sort of Patreon-type group

where we might have a bit of in-house discussion amongst fellow travellers who are interested in this kind of thing, we thought that would be good. And the other thing is we thought we would release some patrons-only podcasts, which is actually kind of helpful because we want to stick with our theme, stick with our format for the gurus, and we don't want to change that for the public broadcast.

But there's a lot of other interesting tangentially related topics that we could deal with, and we thought we could release those as patrons only. Yeah. So I think the two things are that Patreon gives you the ability to release Patreon only feeds where you we can put extra material shorter episodes which wouldn't be so long or would be about like kind of more niche topics that don't require massive amounts of post-production like for example I

have considered looking at the back catalogue of Eric's audio essays and going through them. But obviously we don't want to do every week an Eric Weinstein audio essay. But there's a lot of nonsense in them. Like we've seen with the special episode, they're kind of condensed, conspiratorial thinking and guruism. So I think it would be neat to, you know,

go back through the back catalog, but that might be something to release on the Patreon feed. And other things would be that the audio clips that we use for the episodes to put them up for everyone to download and do whatever you want, listen to it at night, to put put yourself to sleep if you ever wanted these audio clips now is your chance and then and the last thing is like matt says i use patreon and and the thing that i tend to like about the the content that i support is that there's like a little community that forms because you're contributing to a thing and have similar interests and like obviously it depends how big the podcast is but we are fairly niche so so yeah we're just hoping like a couple of people

are interested in doing that then we'll we'll release content and we have like tiers and all that ready to go so yeah you can check it out and contribute or don't yeah yeah it starts at two dollars so really good value good Good value. Nice and cheap. Yeah. So that's it. That's our rank commercialism segment. And now, Matt, we also are able to be accused of being grifters. So I hope you've prepared for this because it was nice while it lasted to be able to say,

well, we're not, we're actually costing money. And possibly that will continue. For a while. It might continue indefinitely. But yeah, I'm sorry that we've now entered the grifter accusation space. So, so c'est la vie. C'est la vie. All right.

Moving right along. Let's, let's introduce the man of the hour, Scott Adams, shall we? Yes, why not? I'll let you do the honors, since I think I've already flagged up my ability to be non-impartial on the mom. Yeah, yeah, me too, unfortunately. But I don't have a great deal to say because I knew virtually nothing about him before, apart from the fact that he created the Dilbert cartoon, which is a bit of a blast from the past, but I remember quite liking it, thinking it was kind of funny. But, you know, since Dilbert, he's had a substantial career

as writing various books, initially leveraging off the cartoon and then moving more into sort of other areas. And they are, they're interesting books. I haven't read them, but I've read about them. You know, they've got a political aspect to them. And I'm thinking of titles like Win Bigly and Loser Think. And they seem to be interesting and very much aligned with his current podcast which we are reviewing today where it's kind of part sort of self-help rules for life but supposedly training in persuasion and critical thinking and to how to figure out when you were being played but also teaching you these skills and he's very interested in donald trump and the four-dimensional chess and so on that Trump undertakes to be convincing.

So it's got a part political commentary, part self-help, and supposedly an explication of logical fallacies and so on. But as we'll see, he talks about the logical fallacies in what we're reviewing today as well. So we'll see how well he goes with that. So, yeah, he's very much a conservative partisan figure, very much in the Make America Great Again camp, you know, a deep climate change sceptic, for instance. Oh, I didn't even know that. So that makes me like him even less. Yeah, it's pretty much if you could check off all of the partisan,

you know, hyper-conservative opinions, and he would pretty much have them all. So getting into his podcast, which is called, what's that called? Coffee with Scott Adams podcast. And the two episodes that we focused on were 1197, odds of rigging an election and getting away with it, the question mark whiteboard time. And 1201, watch me monetize my dumbest critics while discussing the election allegations. Thank you, critics. Yeah, yeah, you can get a sense of the tone of that. So he releases these at an extraordinary rate.

One a day. One a day. And the format is basically quite, quite folksy. And yeah, he sits down, has a cup of coffee with his listeners and just has a bit of a chat about the topics of the day. But as we'll see, they tend to be very much a political diatribe, but organized in a very distinctive style, which I think is very guru-like. So he's turned out to be quite interesting, but as we said at the beginning, a little bit unappealing. A little bit. Yeah. So I think the theme of the podcast is about sitting down, starting your day with a cup of coffee and hearing Scott Adams break down the

political and cultural news for you. That's the way it's presented. But it's with a heavy dose of this audience interaction thing that we've seen with other gurus. Now, he isn't presenting his followers so much as friends like Eric does, but rather as people who are able to see beyond the usual smoke screen that the mainstream throws up, right? You're one of the people that is able to look at things critically and they understand the techniques of persuasion. So there's a lot of audience back patting, but because he's such an obnoxious character, a lot of it is framed at presenting as how much smarter he is than anyone else and kind of speaking down or lecturing

to his audience that obviously you would agree with him if you have any brains. And this thing that he does at the start about getting a coffee, like you say, a kind of folksy nature to it. I think playing an example of it would be a good start, just to get the general gist of how it starts off. And in order to enjoy the double-sided whiteboard to its full extent, what do you need? Not much. A cup or mug or glass,

a tank or chalice or sign, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. And you can fill it with your favorite liquid. I am partial to coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better. Way better. 75% better. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now. Go. I feel science becoming more accurate. I feel data starting to be credible. And that's just one sip. Imagine if I finished that entire mug. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's so upsetting. Yeah, so it's very dissonant. That sort of folksy approach is kind of dissonant when you look at the topics that he covers so to just to give people a sense of this um and i've just pulled up the latest episode which from december the 3rd or just yesterday and he's got the bullet

points helpfully of it which is uh everything we know about COVID origins was BS, limited martial law and redo the election, question mark, obvious massive election fraud is okay now, we've lost democracy, freedom, can we get it back? So it's hyper-partisan stuff, so it's really quite dissonant with the framing of that. Oh, let's just sit down and relax and have a cup of coffee. Yeah, I think part of the issue for me is I know what comes next.

So it's like it actually is triggering to hear his vocal tics and stuff because I know what they're going to be used to say. So I blame you, Matt, because I barely got through the one episode that we broke down and then you suggested we do another one and and I've since ended up like listening to more of them because this is something I would do to myself and so yeah like if you're just a listener and you know nothing about Scott Adams maybe that just finds You know, it just sounds like somebody saying, you know, okay, let's get a coffee together at the start. But for me, that's the intro to an hour and a half of mental peeing.

Yeah, I have to. That's very true. I've, yeah, having listened to several hours of him now, they were not pleasant hours. I just, my skin was crawling pretty much the whole time. So yeah, look, we're setting this up in a very negative way, aren't we? But I mean, it's just, just better to be right. It's justified. It's going to be justified. So, okay. I agree that now we need to get into the reasons that this response has been provoked.

So, so let's start off our proper analysis. If you were waiting for the ad hominems and whatnot to stop, they will stop now. We'll go into this content. Okay, so maybe a good place to start is Scott's view on science and how to best approach science, especially important in this era where there's been now new vaccines developed and the coronavirus. So let's hear the man speak for himself. We all know we should trust science and we should trust the experts, but they interpret things differently. The experts and the scientists look at the same data and they interpret it differently. So how can you trust them? Trusting science is a good idea.

Trusting scientists is the dumbest fucking idea in the world because they're people, and people can't be trusted. People can be right and people can be wrong, but you can't be trusted. People can be right and people can be wrong, but you can't trust them. You can't trust them. Yeah. So that little chuckle there at the end, we're going to be hearing that quite a few times, aren't we?

Endlessly, Mark. We're going to hear it endlessly. Yeah. It's like a little bookmark that signifies the a point that's just been made so yeah so that's pretty um that's pretty representative of what he uh some of the themes he likes to hit um you can see the logic there any problems with the logic that you can see uh yeah of course you cannot have science without scientists you cannot have expertise without scientists. You cannot have expertise without experts. And therefore, they are people. People can't be trusted. Yeah, you can't. So he's definitely eliminated those sources of knowledge with a stroke of logic. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, we've come into this pattern where people say, I'm not going to do something, and then they go on to do it. And in this case, obviously he doesn't want to come across as someone who completely dismisses science. But in essence, he does completely dismiss science because you need scientists to do science. So there's no science without scientists. So saying that I respect science, but I don't respect what scientists tell me,

then how the hell do you know what science is if you don't respect the scientific literature, what people say? And now it is certainly true that scientists are imperfect and there can be mistakes and that you shouldn't treat them as infallible experts. But that's the straw man, right? That's not the point.

Like climate scientists are fallible. Yes. That doesn't mean the science behind climate change is untrustworthy and it's 50-50 on whether it's convincing or not, which is what he's pushing. Yeah. I mean, the general theme that I'm sure he'll hit again and again in these clips is to maximize distrust, maximize cynicism. Yeah. And there's, so there's a nice illustration of, of this dichotomy he creates between the platonic ideal of science, which he respects and the shitty reality of the humans who do it. And here it is. But trust science. But I don't have access to science.

Do you? Reach into your pocket and grab me a handful of science. Do you have any? Because I don't have any. Look at my shelves. I got some books on my shelves, but I don't have any science. I don't have science. I can't get my hands around it.

Don't have access to it. I'll tell you what I do have. People telling me their opinions. That's what I have. I don't have any fucking science. I got people telling me their opinions about science. I don't trust people. Are you kidding me?

I don't trust people at all. Yeah. So again, the villainous giggle or chuckle at the end. But I mean, he spells it out there for himself. But the immediate question that should raise is then, okay, so you don't trust scientists. So what do you trust since scientists are people and he believes that he can read people. So how do you check yourself against simply selecting

what you want to believe based on your own internal motivations? And the answer, as we'll see as things go on, is that he doesn't. He completely leans into whichever experts or data or views that supports his argument, he will endorse. And anything else, he'll just try to cynically undermine or he'll suggest that it's unknowable. There is no data that is meaningful. And if you trust data, you're an idiot. But then in the next sentence, he'll happily cite data that supports his view. So I'm throwing my hands up. Yeah, no, understandable. Look, that's actually pretty well said. I don't have too much to add to that because I think you're right. It's a process of undermining things. I mean, in a platitudinous kind of way, of course it's true.

People are fallible. There's a sociological context in which knowledge is generated by science and data and so on. But really what it is is a smokescreen to just believe whatever narrative it is that you want. And it's a kind of postmodernism that we see in conservatism more and more these days, which, yeah, I find kind of chilling. But yeah, let's maybe go and look at some more examples of this. Yeah. So this leads on to him discussing data. So he's already explained how people should view science. So let's see how he regards data, any kind of data.

I don't believe anything that's data in 2020. All right. Doesn't matter what the topic is. It's voting. It's coronavirus. It doesn't matter. If you believe any public, regardless of the source, if you believe any data you see in public in 2020, you haven't been paying attention. It's pretty much all unreliable. Some of it is true, but it's all unreliable. Okay?

Okay. At least we didn't get a chuckle that time. Yeah, thank goodness for small mercies. Yeah, so it's more of the same, isn't it? Very strong themes there. It's just amazing how postmodern it is because it really is this argument for complete detachment from any kind of knowable material reality and a real a real leaning into this post-truth era so scott

is a big fan of donald trump and his methods of persuasion and yeah you can really see that here like he fully endorses jumping in feet first into a post-truth mindset. Yeah. And let me just play a clip, though, that shows just how cynical this claim is about data and the level of skepticism we should attach to them. Because this is him talking about evidence of election fraud. So, of course, as a Trump apologist, he's completely all in on this voters fraud conspiracies. So here's him talking about whether there's evidence for that.

How could you possibly convince 79% of the people that fraud happened with zero evidence? How's that happen? Well, it could be because there is evidence and democrats just say there isn't you know i would say the the sworn statements from over 200 people that they personally observed irregularities is evidence yeah so the the skepticism that you should attach to data seems to, you know, feed away or dissolve whenever there's like, and these, this is witness testimony or, you know, one thing that strikes me about this is Scott Adams is maximally cynical when it comes to primarily anybody on the left or Democrats. But, but in many respects,

even though he's claiming to be very cynical and cockeyed when it comes to everyone's claims, he's either extremely gullible or he's simply, you know, being a propagandist and he doesn't care what's true. Because the fact that you could get 200 people in a country of over 300 million to take a partisan stance, you know, when a president and highly vocal partisan figure is strongly encouraging people to make those kind of claims. to make those kinds of claims. That should be a case where, yes, you should be skeptical of the data then. You should be skeptical of those accounts because there is motivated ideological factors at play, but he has none of that skepticism

when it comes to things which serve his narrative. Yeah, exactly. So at least to me, I'm not sure if it's clear to our listeners, but it just feels transparently obvious to me that he is a propagandist and is using these rhetorical, pseudological tricks to make his case for persuasion. So it's kind of ironic, actually, that touches on the theme

in his podcast generally, which is that he does consider himself to be an expert on methods of persuasion and his books are partially about that. So it's kind of ironic that his podcast really is an exercise in just almost every slippery rhetorical trick. So I'm sure we'll see a lot more examples of it. I think on some level, he probably would acknowledge that and say that it's just about like, I feel there's a bit of a Schrodinger's cat situation where he wants to argue that he's making logical, well thought out, persuasive arguments. But he's also at the same time winking that what he cares about is convincing and persuading people and not necessarily whether arguments are true.

Well, exactly. And in his talk about the election, I mean, it was kind of indicated by that clip there, but there are clips later on that illustrate it. He really does emphasize that it's perception that matters. The actual reality of the truth doesn't actually matter. All that matters is people's perceptions. So yeah, I think you're right about that. Yeah. And so you raise the point, Matt, you know, is he an expert? And he, as we saw, you know, he disparages expert opinion almost constantly about every topic. But when it comes to the position of himself, let's hear what he says.

And hey, wait a minute. Am I an expert? Am I an expert on, let's say, human motivation within a large organization? I kind of am in my own way. If you're the author of the Dilbert comic, you are kind of an expert on human motivation in large organizations, but I don't have a degree in anything like that, so I won't make that claim. So, Matt, can I just blow out my own brains there at someone saying,

after making that claim explicitly that they are an expert in some topic, finishing the sentence by saying, but I don't, I'm not going to make that claim. It's like, you just did. You just, you actually had rhetorical questions to yourself where you said, you know, am I an expert? Well, yes, I am. But the ending is this denial that that's what was claimed. And it's upsetting to me that the logic is so

contradictory and so superficially contradictory that I really hope people would notice that kind of thing. But I don't think, I think there are many people that don't yeah yeah i think so but luckily we're here to point it out hey chris i'm sorry i'm sorry this is like in case the listeners haven't noticed this was an upsetting one because like the level of bad argumentation and constant rhetoric self-aggrandizing partisan rhetoric. It's just, it's really hard to overstate. That's all his podcast is for like an hour and a half. Anyway, anyway, okay. So let's have one last clip about what's the problem with experts exactly, Matt? It might be this. The listen to the experts things is purely stupidity because you can't tell which expert to listen to.

If you could, you know, that's a different conversation. But you can't. You can't tell. Is it Rudy or is it the selection professional? They have different opinions. Yeah. Yeah. professional they have different opinions yeah yeah i mean i i actually struggle to comment on this because to me it just seems i'm pointing out the blindingly obvious but do it matt do it what is the blindingly obvious okay um oh just because you can find someone who declares an opinion that is different from other experts' opinion doesn't mean that it is completely impossible to access expert opinion.

You can actually take into account people's motivations and backgrounds and roles. Really? Yes, you can. And there is a difference between say rudy giuliani who is not you know is who he is and he's completely impartial he's he's so far in the trump camp that he's like i can't even think of an analogy but like he's in there. He's at the center. He is the tent that they are inside. Yes. He's at the epicenter of partisan ideological blindedness. But when you have

heaps of other people, many of them Republicans, who actually do have a role in supervising elections and judges, any number of other people saying the opposite, then yes, you can wait what different people are saying, consider who they are and what their motivations are. And you can get a pretty good estimate of expert opinion. Like the same goes for climate change, for instance, or whether or not smoking causes cancer. Yes, you can find a doctor who has been paid a lot of money by Philip Morris, right, who will say something different. But that does not obviate the fact that there is an expert consensus on that matter. So I find this rhetoric just so, well, seems so bad to me. But clearly it's not that bad because he's got 300,000 followers on Twitter and many people listen to this and think he's a genius.

So I'm just so sad just knowing that this on Twitter and many people listen to this and think he's a genius. So I'm just so sad just knowing that this podcast exists and that people like it. Let me make you sadder. So here's Scott making the case for why we are wrong about casting doubt towards Rudy Giuliani. Who would be a good expert to tell you whether a city election was rigged? Would you want to hear from an election law professional? Or would you want to hear from Rudy Giuliani? Now, say what you will about Rudy Giuliani, but don't you think he's kind of an expert on municipal fraud?

I always think he would know more about that than just about anybody in the world. I was very tempted, Dermot, to scream when he presented those two options. The first one, the expert on election legal law. That's who I want, not Trump's lawyer. Like, yeah. But you can see the case he makes, right? Which is, it's just highlighting very selective facts and ignoring massively important conflicts of interest. The thing that spun this off is some legal expert on elections telling him, you know, he shouldn't be so cynical and that the system, we've got lots of good reason and a large consensus amongst experts that the American voting

system is, you know, robust and transparent, relatively speaking. Not to say it's not a system without its flaws, right? But then his response was, well, should we trust that guy or Rudy Giuliani? And, yeah. Yeah, it's depressing. And, you know, I guess it's particularly depressing given just the context here, which is that there's a lot of people like Scott Adams who are, including the president, just doing everything they can to undermine Americans' confidence in their own democracy and their own system. I find it really depressing, but we should soldier on and deal with more shitty opinions. Well, okay. So before we get back to all the political nonsense, which is a lot of this content, I did want to highlight one of the guru techniques that we see a lot. And I already talked

about, you know, the engagement with the audience and this folksy sipping coffee together. But we also see the presentation that only the select who can hang with the big boys can follow his arguments and will be able to handle him. So this is him framing, just the framing of one of his arguments. Here's, I could say this a million times and most people won't be able to hear it. There's some ideas that we just can't hear. It's an unusual phenomenon. I'll give you one. Some of you will be able to hear what I say next. Some of you just can't hear it. It'll be like noise, like Charlie Brown's teacher. And so this will be an experiment and it goes like this. like Charlie Brown's teacher. Womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. Womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. And so this will be an experiment, and it goes like this.

So, you know, it's framing things that if you find his argument unpersuasive, it just shows your mental limitations. Yeah, it's a wonderful illustration of the emperor's new clothes thing, isn't it? If you can't see his argument and agree with it, that's like not seeing the emperor's clothes. And you don't want to be one of those people. Yeah, it's such a blatant trick. But yeah, it's interesting that it works. Yeah. And there's, well, there's another segment where he, I can only describe it as deploying full naivety.

And as he's casting these things, he does get feedback, I think, from his YouTube or Periscope commentators. Yeah, he does. And he sometimes responds to slip towards QAnon. And here was his reaction to that. Somebody says, Scott's going full QAnon. You have fallen. I'm going to block you for saying that. You have fallen for the narrative. So I just like, I'm going to block you for saying that. Justice is swift and harsh.

Yeah. So I think that's a good illustration of the kind of way that he regards his followers. Yes, he needs them and they pay money and that and stuff, but out of line and you're gone. You're there, question the master, and there we go. Okay. So this is the application of fake naivety to make a point and it's excruciating, but here we go. naivety to make a point and it's excruciating but here we go since democrats don't listen to trump or they want to do whatever is the opposite he says you expect the democrats are already wearing their masks right i mean sure maybe sometimes they get caught without one but let's say generally they're wearing their masks oh in the comments the comments, you think I'm wrong. You think Democrats are not wearing masks?

Well, that doesn't make any sense. How could it be that Democrats are not wearing masks completely? Because they're not listening to Trump because they're Democrats. Oh, huh. So did you get his point there, Matt, what he was waffling about no i don't think i did really yeah in that segment he's talking about how when biden comes into power that they won't be able to increase the amount of masks wearing because democrats are already wearing masks at ceiling levels and republicans won't listen to him, right? Like Trump fans. So like, it doesn't matter. But he can't resist when the opportunity arises to insinuate that Democrats are

one, just reactionarily responding to Trump. That's why they're not wearing masks, right? Just despite Trump, not because of the positive reasons for that. And then secondly, to respond to the audience suggestion by kind of invoking, oh, you think they would be hypocritical? Democrats would be hypocritical? Hmm. Oh, I guess so. And it's just like, it's all so slimy. He still then slides on to the point, but it's just, everything feels like pantomimed to me.

And there's the way he presents things in the way engages with arguments. Yeah. We'll be seeing a lot more of that. Yeah. So that's like, yeah, as you said, most of his, most of his stuff is about Trump and the election and politics. So should we, should we get into that big pile of stuff? Yes. Yes. Let's.

Well, one section that I find somewhat amazing was this section where he. So first of all, he kind of goes back and forth on whether or not Biden will be elected or will become the president. will be elected or will become the president. And then he does a thing which lots of guru types do, where he's constantly making contradictory predictions and then throwing some words about doubt, basically saying, well, there's a path to Trump to win the presidency. And if you are willing to count that out, wow, you're quite the rube. presidency. And if you are willing to count that out, wow, you're quite the rube. But then in another segment, he'll say, no, yes, it's very likely that Biden will be the president. But

that doesn't mean there was no fraud. Right. And so he no matter what happens, he has these things that he can point to where his his claim was validated. And there's a section where he starts speaking about Biden specifically. But maybe the better illustration of this is he made a prediction about if Biden wins, Trump voters being hunted. And this is him assessing whether that prediction hit or not. Remember, I predicted that if Joe Biden won, Republicans would be hunted. And I was roundly mocked through society for such a ridiculous thing. Well, of course, we've seen people get assaulted just for being Trump supporters. So indeed, they are hunted on the street.

And certainly they will be ferreted out in employment, etc. OK, so that's that's the first claim of success. Before you respond to that, Matt, I will play just a slightly longer one where that's his first evidence that he supplied. And here's the second, which proves that he was correct. Just questioning the outcome. If they should be jailed. You fucking bitch. You fucking piece of shit.

Rachel Maddow. She's asking if Trump supporters should be jailed for not breaking a crime, just doubting the outcome of an election. Think about that. Now, when you were mocking me for saying that Republicans would be hunted, what the fuck is this? What the fuck is this? what the fuck is this if this is not a pretty clean signal that democrats are willing to jail i mean that's her word she used the word jail i'm not interpreting yeah so just for the context though that's a news reporter on cnn or msnbc or one of them who asked me, asked a legal expert, well, are people cynically contesting election results could, could face jail time. That was the, the context.

Yeah, that's right. And that's, I mean, one of the reasons listening to him is so creepy is that there's just so much venom sort of underneath that sort of folksy style. And yeah, look, but I think the reason you chose that clip was just to illustrate how, you know, these predictions can always be shown to be true. Just what you need is one case of someone wearing a MAGA hat getting roughed up on the street

or one journalist speculating whether or not cynically pushing conspiracy theories that undermine the election process might be a criminal offense. And he can, he could sort of prove his claim, which is really hyperbolic. To go back to the original claim, it's not like it was expressed cautious or conservative way. It was saying that Trump supporters would be hunted down. Yeah. It's not the exact same, right? Like a pundit on a uh like political even even if she was making what he

claims and it seems not you know maybe it was like a badly chosen question or something but she's not jailing anyone she has no power it's just a pundit asking a legal person a question that's it yeah that's it yeah yeah but that's all you need isn't it there's so much there's so much chatter there's so much um discourse in the info sphere that everything happens at least once so there is stuff that will support any narrative that you like including yeah trump supporters getting hunted down and after the election anyway yeah and i you know one of the motivations, but originally behind doing this podcast was that the people in this sphere, especially in the political sphere,

don't really get covered by skeptics or that kind of thing, right? You won't hear the skeptics guide to the universe talking about Scott Adams, for example, but in large part, I think they actually should because the technique that he's employing here is the exact same technique as a psychic who throws out vague predictions, a whole bunch of them. And then when it comes later, points back to the things that are hits and completely ignores the misses and also reframes things such that things that are classified as hits are very, very questionable. And like Scott Adams is doing here. So like, this is basically just the exact same logic as bad psychics. But people don't approach it like that. They kind of treat political commentary

as a separate category. And that's one of the things like to me, I don't think it is. Yeah, I agree with you there. I think you're right to me, I don't think it is. Yeah, I agree with you there. I think you're right. I think people don't usually touch it. And it is difficult to deal with because most political discourse is pretty bad, like across the spectrum. A lot of it is partisan and one-eyed and all that stuff, but some is really worse than others. And this is one of those situations, I think. Yeah. I'll give another illustration, which hasn't happened yet, but you can see the framing coming in advance for how Scott will justify when Biden is sworn in and, you know, none of the

court cases work. So he has a whole ton of explanations ready for this. But this was one that struck me as particularly notable. But let's say he goes through the process and he's absolutely the president of the United States. Our Constitution is active. The Supreme Court has spoken. If they get involved, it's just done. And then, hypothetically, just asking the question, and then after that, proof comes out that the election was rigged, and rigged sufficiently that it changed the outcome. What would happen?

What would happen? Because haven't all the experts been telling us it's too late? Correct me if I'm wrong. Hasn't every expert said, you know, once it gets to this point, well, then it's just too late. It's over. Is it? Is it? I'm not so sure yeah he's like the fucking joker yeah yeah that's just so there's just so many things wrong with that i mean it's at first it's well the most obvious thing is that it's just based purely on speculation, on just a hypothetical scenario, which, you know, there's no evidence for, but it will be. Yeah. Anyway. It allows him to say that when it doesn't happen, it could happen in years to come.

Right. Which is like, is always something that could happen. Like, if in the future evidence emerges that completely vindicates my view, I'll be vindicated. Yes, that could happen. Like if in the future evidence emerges that completely vindicates my view, I'll be vindicated. Yes, that's true. But there's no reason to suspect that will happen. But it will allow him to basically say to his audience

that he hasn't been proven wrong because there isn't 50 years from now. So yeah. Yeah. So it's a little bit like the people who are waiting for the for the alien spaceship that's attached to a comet or something that will that will lift them up from this world and carry them off to nirvana right they they've got a date they're expecting it to happen by this date it's definitely going to happen and that date passes and they

revise the dates and just got to wait a little bit longer but yeah like people are astoundingly patient no matter how many dates get missed and the alien spaceship hasn't lifted them up from this from this mortal coil into a higher spiritual realm they seem quite okay with that constant deferment of the promise yeah it doesn't matter. Right. And, and to some extent, Scott's audience must be just enjoying the reinforcement because I don't think that Scott has a lot of people listening to him who want to be challenged by his TX. No. It's just someone telling you what you want to hear in various ways. Like he presents arguments that are internally inconsistent all the time in this. But I don't think people mind. And if I can give one example.

So this is still on the Trump apologetics, which is like so much of what he does, he starts talking about Trump and crimes and whether if he is removed, whether he should be prosecuted for crimes or whether he's committed any crime. So here's the start of that segment. I hope that Trump does some kind of a clever pardon before he leaves office. You know, something like stepping down on the last day of his term and having Pence pardon him for everything he's ever done. I hope that happens. Now, normally, I would say, I sure hope that anybody who committed a crime gets caught. I mean, typically, I would like people to get caught for doing crimes. But what exactly is Trump's crime? Can you think of one? I have not heard a crime even alleged, have you? Apparently,

there are all these lawsuits in the Southern District of New York, and they're looking through his financials and stuff. But do me a fact check on this. Has anybody alleged a crime? And why haven't we heard it? What is the specific crime? Because otherwise, it looks like they're just looking for a crime. Are you okay with that? Are you okay that a politician can be examined just to see if there's a crime, without any evidence that there was a crime? Are you okay with that? I'm not okay with that. There's a lot there. I'll get your reaction in a second, but I just, I have to mention the part where he's like, has Trump been accused of a crime? There's no crime. Of course, there's all these legal cases where he's, he's been accused of various things, but I've

never heard of the specific details. And is that a crime? And then also that he should pardon himself in advance because there's no evidence of there being a crime. But then why would he need to pardon himself? Like it's all internally inconsistent. Well, I guess his argument would be that the Democrats are, well, that, you know, his enemies are manufacturing crimes and therefore it's legitimate to use a trick to protect yourself

against a dirty trick, which I think he gets into. Yes, he does. So let me play him explaining that to us in his own unique way. So if Trump and Pence used a political trick, you know, to sort of pardon him for everything that happened up to that point in life, I think that would be appropriate because there's a trick being used against him. So if you use a trick to counter another trick, I'm okay with that 100%. And I very much hope that it happens. And again, I don't care if there's a real crime or not because whether or not there's a real crime is a much lower priority, then we shouldn't be doing this. Yeah. So you see the change there slightly?

Yeah. Interesting reasoning there, isn't it? If people are being prosecuted for, and they are indeed guilty of a crime, then if the motivation for that prosecution is in any way or you know investigation is in any way politically motivated then that's much worse than the crimes actually occurring so you could use any trick in the book to subvert that process it's yeah it's just amazing logic to as you say chris the people listening to this are people who, there's no one here that are Trump skeptics or Democrats. He's essentially delivering the kind of logical or mental framework that is deeply satisfying to people who are just full-blown MAGA. Yeah. He's a human embodiment of confirmation bias, not only of himself. I think for the vast majority of people who want the consumer's content, because I can't imagine

anybody who is sufficiently critical not being tortured by listening to him. It's torture. But, and I listened to a lot of people who make bad arguments and, you know, bad logic. But this is shocking. And I'll just play just moments before he went into that thing saying he doesn't care if there's a real crime. He did say this. Now, if it turns out there is all this evidence of a crime that I don't know about, then I will revise my opinion. But based on what we know now, it looks like they're after him for political reasons. And I think that should be shut down. Yeah. So that's not true, Scott,

because a minute later you said you don't care if there's actual evidence for crimes. So, yeah, I know he can't hear me, but I just need to express the level of inconsistency. That's just over the space of four or five sentences. He manages to completely change his standards, change the argument, reverse claims about what he's saying, and yet still manage to add in his smug little chuckles and giggles. Yeah. I think the thing that really irritates you and me too, obviously,

is that pretense at, it's a real pretense at logical argument when it's just, it's so much just pure ideological fixation. And it's just so transparently a rationalization of what you initially want to believe. And, but going through the motions of reasonableness is just so, yeah, it's just so annoying. When I'm teaching about debate to students in my classes, I make them aware of this distinction between like substantive arguments and rhetoric. And basically that if you're doing the debate, you actually, rhetoric is often more effective than substantive argument. Like it shouldn't be, but it, but it is. And the thing is that Scott is a hundred percent rhetoric. He's pure rhetoric.

He's like a man, rhetoric took human form and came to earth and was a Dilbert cartoon writer. But just to continue on that point, and then I'll tap out and let you highlight some things maybe you would like. There's this segment where he starts talking about why do people care if Biden's going in anyway, because he can't change anything. There's this segment where he starts talking about why do people care if Biden's going in anyway, because he can't change anything. He's not going to improve anything. And here's the logic there. Isn't that in the past? Because how do you fix the past? Is Joe Biden going to use his time machine to go back and fix the past? I don't think that's an option. So what is it he's going to do that would be that different than what Trump would have done

if he had a second term? I feel like the mask wearing is going to be pretty similar. I feel like the shutdowns are going to be pretty similar. And I feel like the vaccines are going to come out and be delivered pretty similarly. So even if you accepted, oh, we hate what Trump already did in the past, and even if you accept that it was a mistake and caused X number of lives, even if you believe that,

how does that translate into the future? Because now we actually understand the situation in a way we didn't before. So now that we understand it better, I would imagine that a Republican and a Democrat would end up acting the same way. When you didn't know what worked and what didn't, which is the early months, then you would expect some people would get it wrong, some people would get it right. But now that we're far more informed, still not quite informed, but more informed, I would expect a Democrat and a Republican to look pretty much the same. So I'll jump in first.

Please, please. So he's conflating two terrible arguments. And it's partly in response to the pretty widespread belief that Trump did a terrible job in handling COVID, right? Yes. So he's got two arguments there. One, which is just so terrible, is that there's no point changing a president who's done a really bad job for one who might do a better job because that was happened

all in the past and you can't change the past so you may as well just stick with the president you've got so that's just i don't know how to explain how that's terrible is that self-evidently terrible do i need to explain it but it's like it's almost so bad in the notion that it's hard to pinpoint where the worst part of it is. Perhaps in the failure to acknowledge that past events connect to present events and are predictive of future events. That might be like simple causality. Oh, Chris, by the way, this foreshadows his talk about the lawsuits, which we'll talk about later on, where none of the lost lawsuits can generate. That doesn't tell us anything about the likelihood of the next lawsuit to succeed. But anyway, sorry. No, that's it. I was just pinpointing one part that is particularly terrible, But please go on. Well, just to finish, the second part of his argument

is that we just didn't know that, yes, Trump's handling of it was not great, but he's making out that was because we were working with incomplete information and, you know, we didn't know enough about the time and so on. And, you know, we don't want to relitigate that, but I just want to point out that that's a very poor argument because so many other places did so much better than Trump

and they did have the information and the Republican Party and Trump have been constantly undermining any kind of reasonable public health response. But I think it was the one about, well, you may as well just keep electing the same people. It doesn't matter how badly they do because it's all in the past, man. Tomorrow's a fresh new day. That's the most enlightened both-siderism that you can have to basically say like, none of it matters. The person can completely contradict scientific experts and they can

do whatever. And like, ultimately some people. And ultimately, some people will be right and some people will be wrong. But in the end, how are things going to be different now with a Republican and a Democrat? And one of the first things that the Biden transition team has done is set up this panel of experts to advise, not a panel of family members and partisan morons, right? And I'm not saying that there aren't scientific advisors in Trump's cabinet. There are, you know, Fauci and all that kind of thing, but not his cabinet, but you know what I mean, the advisors around him. But the look on their faces is one of constant pain and one that they're constantly having to correct what he's claimed publicly,

or walk it back, or walk this tightrope to avoid him going on a rage against him. So just the notion that that doesn't matter, it's so transparently wrong. The other thing that struck me is that if he really believes that it doesn't really matter, why does he care? And why is he such a hopeless Trump partisan? If it doesn't matter, if it makes no difference, exactly. What's, what's it matter then who's there? It's all the same, right? And there's, so he starts from that part.

He begins like looking at these claims that Trump was uniquely bad and then trying to litigate the Trump administration and show that basically he has done nothing wrong. It's all been successful. There's loads of examples he gives, but I'll just touch on two of them. The second one is the Middle East. What about the Middle East? Will Biden go in there and fix everything that Trump broke in the Middle East? Well, no, actually, it looks like Trump fixed the Middle East, or at least it's heading in the right direction. Israel's making friends with a number of neighboring countries like never before. Iran seems to be marginalized and things seem to be relatively less warlike than normal.

So I don't know what he's fixing there. Yeah, so Trump solved, fixed the Middle East, Matt. And, you know, backing out of the Iranian nuclear deal and all that. What does that matter? Yeah. You can have a positive assessment of Trump's foreign policy. That's possible, right? But casting it in the extreme way that he does, that it's been an unmitigated success

and Trump has created unprecedented levels of peace. It's really not, it shouldn't be convincing to people. He may, he may not. I often hear people making this point about, you know, Trump didn't start some international foreign war. And I, I really think, does anybody believe if 9-11 happened under Trump's watch, if an event like that happened, do you really think he would be constrained and wouldn't react like in belligerent and aggressive form based on whatever his hunches or advisor said? Like he's never shown that kind of restraint.

Yeah. So I think maybe there are conservatives who could possibly agree with Scott Adams on this. But this is him talking about the economy. How about the economy? Trump had the economy just humming along until coronavirus, of course. Now, will Biden fix the coronavirus? There's not much he can do for the economy.

The economy is going to do what it does. So when the economy was going well, that was Trump that made that happen. But when Biden enters office, then, well, he can't affect the economy. It just does what it does. Yeah. Yeah. That's convenient, isn't it? He's actually probably right, but that's not his point. His point is just partisanship. That's all it is. The economy is good. That's a positive for Trump. If the economy is good with Biden, well, all it is. The economy is good. That's a positive for Trump. If the economy is good with Biden, well, that's just nothing to do with him.

And it's in the same sentence almost, Matt. It's in the same sentence. That's right. I mean, that's not a surprising thing to see with partisan people. But to put it in the same sentence virtually, I think that's impressive. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm still animated about this. So maybe I'll let you lead us where we go to next from here. So much to choose from. I'm looking at our folders here and wondering what to pick. I think we'll return to the logic around the election, the stolen election, which he does spend an awful lot of time going into.

So let's start by looking at this logic about how the election in the United States definitely didn't reflect the will of the people. Well, let's look at them together. Social media, maybe move things 5%, fake news 5%, rule changes 5%, COVID, I don't know, maybe another 5%, Rule changes, 5%. COVID, I don't know, maybe another 5%. Fraud, maybe 5%. Now, if you add all these together, how many did you get here? 5, 10, 15, 20, 25%. And most of that movement would be toward Biden. How much did the will of the people factor into this election? Zero. Yeah, so he actually spends a fair bit of time going through all of these 5% and talking about how all of these factors would have influenced the election. And it's speaking to this broader theme that he's got, which is that the election was just sort of fundamentally illegitimate and the outcome of the election

was illegitimate. So what do you think of his logic there, Chris? Yeah. I mean, he goes through those exercises of illustrating all those individual points and then basically explaining his take, which assigns all of these percentages to Biden. And it's basically just him listing out his motivated reasoning exercises where he discounts any way that it could benefit Trump and purely assigns everything to Biden. And I just don't get, I mean, I do get why, but I kind of, I'm exasperated that that should be convincing to anyone because it's, it's so clearly designed to reach a predetermined outcome that it's no, no surprise what he reaches because that's what he, that's all he's saying it for yeah yeah i mean it doesn't

make mathematical sense obviously to sort of have these guesstimates of of how much some arbitrary thing like in quotation marks fake news affected the election and then to just nominate some percentage that it shifted the sort of needle of the popular vote and then add all those up the whole exercise is just logically flawed. But, yeah, as you say, the motivation for it is just, yeah, it's just so transparently partisan, part of this broader argument to undermine the election, not just in the specifics, not to say, oh, you know, these particular votes here

shouldn't have been counted or something like that, but really to show just in principle that the American election couldn't have been free and fair. I wanted to mention, Matt, that I think we'll get onto it in more detail after, but it seems as good a time as any to start flagging up the level of cynicism he has about American democracy and how there was no democracy in this election. So I also have a clip, him talking about the lack of democracy, which follows on from the clip you played. So probably the thing that affected the election was whatever social media brainwashed you for, whatever the fake news created as your reality,

the mail-in ballots, which is a process change, which probably changed the outcome. Just the fact that there was a coronavirus and they had to do mail-in ballots probably could change the outcome. And then what about the fraud? We'll talk about that in a minute. could change the income. And then what about the fraud? We'll talk about that in a minute.

So how much of what I just mentioned is the people's will? None of it. It's the opposite of the people's will. Nothing like democracy happened. There was nothing like democracy that just happened in the United States. But we probably will get over it. Yeah, that's a good example, Chris. It's a theme that is essentially the main point of these two episodes, and I presume many of his podcast episodes, which is that you don't live in a democracy, and really to delegitimize the election result just in every fundamental way that you don't live in a democracy, and really to delegitimize the election result in every fundamental way that you can.

So the thing about it that's, I guess, so irksome to both of us is that it's just so transparently motivated reasoning. It's designed for people who just don't like the outcome and want to just emotionally reject it as not real. For people who are essentially MAGA to the hilt and cannot possibly contemplate the very concept that Trump might not be the most popular presidential candidate. And all of these pseudo-logical exercises are designed to provide just this sort of facsimile of a logical framework to support that predetermined belief. Yeah. I hate it. Yeah, yeah. To be very clear, I don't

hate people who are conservative or vote Republican. You know, i'm not one of these people who think oh they're all terrible racists and and etc but i i hate the the violence but yeah the cultish behavior of it and the violence that is being done to rational thinking that is to pretend to do it when really you're just pandering to just the most base partisan emotions. Yeah, I agree. So is there another clip that we should hear? Oh, God, so many. There are so many. We'll try to focus more on the logical problems here. So let's look at an issue here where he's talking about this shift

in the goalposts being done by Democrats about widespread fraud and different definitions of fraud. So maybe let's listen to that one. That's strawmanning. You're just pretending somebody said something else so you can defend the other thing because you can't defend the actual thing. So that's what the widespread thing is. So the claim is that there's specific fraud in just the right places. And what they say when they defend is like, well, there's no widespread. There's no widespread claim.

So that's just strawmanning by changing the argument. All right. Yeah, it's pretty hard to capture because he spends a lot of time talking about it. This idea that the Democrats have consistently changed their stance apparently first of all they were saying it's not possible we've got a rigorous system there's no possibility of fraud and then they change their tune they said there there was there's no evidence for fraud um you know we haven't seen any fraud actually occur and then apparently they changed their tune again to say that there's no widespread fraud and or then it's baseless versus it hasn't been proven yet. And there's a lot of wordplay going on here to supposedly demonstrate that the other side, the Democrats in this case,

are consistently changing their position. Yes, there was another part in one of the episodes where he's complaining about the voting expert that we heard him talk about earlier, basically responding to an argument he made. And it completely echoes this point. So I'll play that clip and then, yeah, hold on. And he says, I'd really hope you'd listen to experts on this because experts are really fucking believable. So he says, I really hope you'd listen to experts on this. More paper ballots, more identity validation, more audits,

more bipartisan observation and transparency than ever before. Widespread fraud is not possible and didn't happen. See what he did there? You see how he inserted the word widespread? Did I say widespread? Nope. If he had not put the word widespread in there, would he be so confident? Nope. Was the Kennedy-Nixon election that was allegedly rigged, was it widespread? No. No, it was very targeted. So that distinction, right, the widespread versus targeted, that's the crucial thing. So people can refute that there's widespread fraud,

but that's not his point. His point is that there's targeted fraud, right? Yeah, yes. So I guess, how should we deal with this? Because we don't want to re-litigate. Well, one thing I will say, Matt, is that he's very clear that he isn't saying that there was widespread voter fraud, right? Let me just play a short clip from later in the same episode. Did they believe the fine people hoax? Did they believe the drinking bleach hoax? If you believe this stuff because you believe the fake news, does that create a situation in which the motivation for massive fraud involving potentially lots of people, is the motivation there? Yes, right? Is there anybody watching this who would disagree with the statement that the motivation to cheat was higher than it has ever been?

By far. Not even close. So just to note,, he said massive, massive voter fraud and the highest motivation ever. So it's like, I'm sorry to veer off, but it was just that struck me when I was listening to the episode that, you know, it'll get redundant to point out how internally inconsistent he is, but he, he really is. And he can allege massive fraud across loads of people because of the exceptional circumstances in this election. And then in the next segment, he'll be saying,

you stupid idiot, suggesting that I said there would be massive fraud, right? Yeah. Yeah. I know. There's that. And then there's also just the, what seems to me, this really just duplicitous wordplay. Like I've, you know, I've somewhat casually,

but followed this controversy and the response by all the people on the other side has been entirely consistent to any to any reasonable person who's not doing dodgy rhetoric in terms of the replies saying yes we have a very rigorous and and safe electoral system where large-scale fraud isn't is impossible and then that's not inconsistent to say that there's no evidence of widespread fraud, is it? And this idea of, like, it's not a very complicated concept to grasp that in every election, when there's, you know, untold millions of votes cast, that there's always a bit of noise, you know, the counting process, all of these things, no one expects any election count to be literally perfect to the final vote. It just has to be reliable within a

certain margin of error. And so every election is subject to just random people doing random dodgy stuff. That's why there's some qualifier because you can't say absolutely there was no fraud whatsoever, because obviously any, they could just, even just one case of one person manufacturing one vote would count as fraud. So there is no contradiction. There is no sort of smoking gun here or shifting Gold Coast, as he says. It's been extremely consistent as far as I can tell, which is to say that you have a safe system. The degree of fraud that is being alleged isn't practicable given a system like this. And it's exactly the same in Australia.

Nobody seriously thinks that's actually possible. And none of those positions are inconsistent. Yet this rhetorical ploy that he's got there is to somehow purport that there's massive inconsistencies in this position. It's just really annoying. Yeah. And that point that he made about the Kennedy-Nixon election and the role that fraud played in that, this is him discussing that case a little bit earlier. Number one, do you believe that the Kennedy-Nixon election was rigged? Now, if it was rigged, and I believe historians now agree on this, right? Give me a fact check.

But I think the historians agree that the Kennedy-Nixon election was rigged. Now, did it have to be widespread? Apparently not. Yeah, so this is just to say I don't trust Scott Adams, so I checked. And no, historians do not agree that there was definitely voter fraud and that's what swung the election. There's disagreement and there's significant debate that while there was suspicion of some fraud in Illinois with the mayor, there's also plenty of historians that say it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. The people,

I rather predictably, who think it did determine things tend to be Republicans. So the way he just casts it as if, well, that proves that things can be targeted and historians agree that that election was won via this very specific targeted fraud. No, they don't. And the wider premise that Biden's team was so prepared that they knew exactly the swing states, the target and the amount of ballots, the way they needed to do it and so on. It is really grandiose. And it's like, it's easy to look back, you know,

it's the sharpshooters fallacy. And actually, it's not true, because Biden has won by quite a bit. He has the popular vote. But the way the US election system means that in some swing states, the margins were not massive, but they're not close. It's not like the Bush and Gore election, which came down to 500 votes in Florida or whatever it was. It's not like that. So all this injection of doubt is, it's almost pointless to refute the individual points because they're not in good faith. No, they're not in good faith. And there's just so many of them. So it's probably just better for us to just point to the broader theme here which is that he is just doing using every rhetorical trick and also misrepresenting things in order to make

it seem inevitable and incontrovertible that the election was stolen and is illegitimate. So if you don't mind, we could play a clip where he essentially argues that it would be extraordinary if the Democrats, to even imagine that the Democrats didn't steal the election, even without any evidence. And then I go on and I say, Democrats make the extraordinary claim, right now, see if you think this is an extraordinary claim that Democrats are making, that despite sky-high motivation and plenty of opportunity to cheat in the election, that they didn't do it. How extraordinary would it be if you, let's say, took a pile of money, cash, and left it on the street of a crime-ridden inner city? How extraordinary would it be if you came back in a week and it was all there, that nobody took any?

That'd be pretty extraordinary, wouldn't it? Yeah. So, again, more awful reasoning. The logic goes that because there is a lot of motivation to cheat purportedly on the behalf of Democrats, and because again, purportedly, they had a lot of opportunity. I don't know if that's true, given I do think the American electoral system is reasonably robust. He makes out that it would be extraordinary if they didn't steal the election and likens it to living a wallet full of money on the street and for it not to be stolen. So he's shifting the

burden of proof on the other side to prove that it wasn't stolen, essentially. Yeah. And it actually doesn't matter if the system is robust or not, Matt, because here's him talking about the voting system. Let's just hear him highlighting some issues. But I don't think there's anybody who believes that these alone, the cameras and the direct observation, given how limited that is for the entire chain of custody. Is there anybody who drives around behind the vans carrying the ballots? Does anybody drive behind those vans to make sure that they don't stop and unload anything? There must be massive parts of the process that are not witnessed by two witnesses. Wouldn't you say?

So it doesn't matter whether or not you can show that because the system automatically must have these things. There aren't three people at all times looking at every ballot. So you can insert uncertainty and doubt. Even if there are robust systems, there's always some part where you're going to have a weak link in the chain. And that's all he needs to insert his annoying doubt, right? And to convince people they don't need to heed the result because you'd be stupid. You'd be a rube to trust this system. Yeah. And the bigger picture, the context in which this is happening, of course, is the persistent inability of Trump's team to actually bring forth any solid evidence

of fraud. So he's, what he's doing is building this kind of logical, tautological case where it just must have been stolen. And you actually don't need to have any evidence of that because logically it had to happen and in any case you can't prove it didn't happen and yeah you need to go with your feelings about this so i think it's probably good now to move into this other clip which illustrates his opinion that it doesn't really matter what the facts of the matter are, but what's really important is how people feel about them. The sworn testimonies of hundreds of people who said they saw frauds, Republicans are likely to believe, even if they're not true. So fact aside, and court aside, and science aside, our democratic process-ish, the republic, if you will,

is built on how we feel. It's not built on the court. It's not built on the truth. It's not built on science. Yeah, yeah. So look, I'm trying to keep these clips short because he takes an awfully long time to build these arguments. But really what he's doing there is stepping further and further away, away from the notion that any kind of fraud has to be demonstrated, but rather laying the groundwork for saying, well, what's important is just the level of confidence that people have in the election. And if the Republicans don't have confidence in the election, that's all that matters. So this completely ignores the fact that people like Trump and him have been doing their level best to destroy confidence in elections. But then if people then subsequently don't have confidence in their elections, then that is sufficient justification to actually put aside the results of the election and instead go to one of these alternate processes whereby the states actually just disregard the

electoral college or disregard the popular vote in their state. And they just nominate whoever they want as their electors in the college. So I find it, yeah, I just find it chilling. It has this kind of, again, this sort of of folksy fatherly approach to it but really and we're going to hear more of this his his theme throughout these podcasts is to encourage people to forget about elections forget about their democracy and instead take all means necessary to ensure that the outcome that they want comes to pass. Well, look, that sounded a lot like J.P. Sears saying, what matters is what you feel is true. Just go with what you're feeling.

And as we talked about in that episode, that's a terrible way to ascertain things that are actually true because you're loaded with biases and lack of knowledge about how things actually operate rather than they superficially seem. And you're right that his role in this is to inject doubt to make the system seem legitimate for his purposes or the prop up Trump, which indirectly helps him as well. But there's endless examples of this that we could give. But I want to play one. I'm not sure if it caught your eye, but it caught mine, where he's talking about something that we haven't seen on the mainstream media that we should have seen. Have you seen, did you see the special on CNN? I hope you all saw the special on CNN where they went through the entire voting process from beginning to end.

And they showed you all the controls and the way that they monitor it so that you could see with your own eyes from beginning to end. There's a trail of custody that's watched the whole time. You have multiple observers. You've got cameras. You all saw that special, right? That showed that election cheating is so difficult it basically couldn't happen. Did you all see the special? Oh, no, you didn't.

Because it doesn't exist. Yeah, there's no special like that. But why not? Isn't that the most obvious news content you can imagine? So, I mean, the point I want to make there, Matt, is just he's poisoning the minds of the people listening because like you didn't see that. And like I actually can see from in that clip how someone reasonable could listen and go, yeah, you know, why haven't I seen that documentary? And first of all, I think Scott Adams has done absolutely nothing to examine coverage of voting systems in the run up to this election.

But secondly, of course, you can't have a single frigging documentary that covers the entire voting system in the US, except on like a really superficial level to get into all this specific details across so many different states with different regulations. And because it's a federal system, you can't have that. But he uses the fact there isn't something there. And there has been tons of documentaries like FiveThirtyEight explaining voting procedures and rules that people probably didn't pay attention to before about mail-in voting. And I would imagine like on lots of other media as well. But he uses that to just create the seed of doubt in the person listening. That's

suspicious, isn't it? Why haven't I seen that? And you're just like, man, you know, whispering little worm that he is trying to sow doubt in any way he can. Yeah, that's right. Any way he can. So you're right. You hear the same arguments in even flat-earther conspiracies where, isn't it weird that we haven't seen video of this particular thing? And it's not weird. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Oh, dear. It's painful. It's painful. But look, I mean, we've got so many clips here of him doing very similar stuff. For instance, before we talked about how the past is no predictor of the future, therefore, you know, this kind of reasoning there. And he talks more about that kind of thing with this logic on the lawsuits, just completely disregarding the outcomes of all of those suits that were filed by the Trump team, which they were very confident about, and they talked up an awful lot, and were then subsequently rejected. He, of course,

disregards those outcomes and says that doesn't give us any indication at all about whether or not the next lawsuit that comes up could possibly win. I'm not sure whether we need to play all these clips because there's just so much of it. Well, let's hear this one at least. The fact that completely different lawsuits with different evidence and different claims, the fact that those were rejected certainly makes me feel safe that the next one, that they've had time to prepare good evidence and make completely different kinds of claims, well, I'm pretty safe that those different lawsuits are going to be failures too. So that would be your confirmation bias

and your pattern recognition kicking in and trying to protect yourself. I feel like saying, how dare you invoke those concepts when that's all you exist on. Yeah, to make out that the fact that That's all you exist on. Yeah. To make out that the fact that however many dozens of lawsuits have been rejected, to present it to be a fallacy that one might have any expectation about the likelihood of lawsuit number 37 or whatever they're up to, to put that out, to make that out to be a fallacy.

Yeah. up to to put that out to make that out to be a fallacy um yeah well he has a habit of doing this presenting arguments as if things are fallacious right the the people who are criticizing him for a given thing are fallacious um we we've seen that throughout all the clips it almost doesn't matter which curve you you play because you kind of get it wherever you're looking. But there was another part where he was talking about how persuasive Trump is. And like, even with these failed cases, you mentioned the level of support he gets. And he makes this point. And he makes this point.

So apparently there's some data out that 79 percent of Trump supporters believe the election was fraudulent. Seventy nine percent. one of the biggest criticisms that I personally received was, Scott, are you telling me you think that President Trump, or candidate Trump at the time, are you telling me you think Trump is persuasive? Where's the evidence of that? I don't see any evidence he's persuasive. Well, how about convincing 79% of his supporters that an election had been thrown? You can't get much more persuasive than that. Yes, you can. Oh, God.

I just, uh. Oh, yeah. Look, what are we going to say there, Chris? All I want to say is it's just another illustration of him using evidence which doesn't support the conclusion he makes. Right. There's no surprise that in a hyper partisan political environment that the vast majority of Republicans will go along with whatever Trump says. Like that pattern has already been established. Well, it doesn't mean that he's uniquely persuasive. Yeah, of course. What it means is that the environment is super partisan. And like, I don't even know if people actually legitimately believe what Trump claims, you know, or they just, they just echo whatever his line is.

Well, I'm not sure that even Scott Adams believes it. Like, I think he really does believe that persuasion and public opinion trumps truth and truth and science in his words. Like he really, he really is all about that. He's so postmodern. So even if you grant his premise, right, that Trump convincing 79% of Americans that the election was stolen. No, 79% of Republicans. Of Republicans. Yeah, of course.

Now, I mean, if it was so obvious, if there was so much evidence that the election was stolen, he wouldn't need to be persuasive, right? He's using Trump's spin and disinformation. Like he's implying that there is a lot of spin and, and persuasiveness required to back up claims. Well, the problem there, Matt, is you're trying to connect two points where Scott Adams is incapable of doing that. So that you are trying to say, well, yes, but doesn't that undercut his argument? You know, the stuff that we've just been talking about, you know, making the cases and all that kind of thing. Yes, they're feeling what's the issue about

persuading. But it doesn't it doesn't matter to him that those two points are contradicted. Right. Trump being persuasive, no matter what, means that even if he's talking shit, that people will accept that. So it doesn't matter if the evidence is real or not, but yet it is real and then he'll spend time undermining it. So it's just, it's all, it all feels empty and just extremely cynical. Yeah. Empty, cynical rhetoric. And it's so depressing to listen to. I think this is probably one of our least entertaining episodes because it just has been so depressing and such an unhappy experience to have to listen to i think this is probably one of our least entertaining episodes because it just has been so depressing and such an unhappy experience to have to listen to scott but you know i think it had to be done because he is he really does exemplify some of the worst

aspects of this kind of conspiratorial guru behavior so i think we have to you know just persevere through the bitter end yes so take us where you will uh mcdonald's okay we're getting there we're getting there so look i um i guess it's following on this theme of really quite machiavellian thinking in terms of winning at all costs and with complete disregard to reality so let's play a clip where he's talking about all Trump needs to do in order to win. And there are enough states and the swing states controlled by enough Republican legislatures that if they inject enough doubt into the electoral process, fortunately, the founders and the framers of the Constitution, they allowed for that. The founders and the framers of the Constitution, they allowed for that.

So that was a known risk. And so the process has very clear steps. Oh, if you can't make a decision with the electoral college process, it moves to the House. The House gets one vote for each state, and there are more Republican states. That's it. That's it. Yeah, so there's some stuff to say about that. But why don't we, before we comment, just play the next clip there, talking about the role that the lawsuits play in this road to victory. The strategy was to inject doubt, maybe get a delay, keep the argument alive in the mind of the public, make it look like there's lots of smoke so there must be fire. Did it accomplish those things?

Well, it certainly accomplished the latter, which is make you think there's a lot going on. I know. So for me, this is just so horrible. Like it feels like after all of that talk about how it's just obvious that the Democrats had to have stolen the election and that's just truth and facts and logic, now he's switched mode and he's talking in terms. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't actually matter. It's just pure Machiavellianism. All you need to do is to, it feels like he's saying the quiet bit out loud, which is the real strategy here. This is where he's actually speaking the truth, right? He's saying it's all about injecting doubt and uncertainty and undermining confidence in the elections. And the lawsuits were sort of a partial success in that respect because it's, you know, he's virtually admitting exactly what we are criticizing for. And this is so horrible. Yeah. And we know, I think Matt, maybe we're both sick of this guy. So like, let's, let's get to the dark place where this goes to in the end.

And I mean, it's dark every day. I've heard more podcasts since then. And there's one where he's just reeling against bullying and how he'd be willing to have a civil war to end bullying, even if a million people died. And you might think from that, oh, what? Like he doesn't like bullies. He means the people poking fun at the witnesses called by Giuliani and Trump. He doesn't mean Trump. He doesn't factor in the thing that Trump is famous for being a bully. And he just reels against bullies, but never highlights hypocrisy. Democracy is gone.

We are living in a bullyocracy. The result of the election wasn't based on democracy. It wasn't based on the republic. It wasn't based on the constitution. So the guy who's worried that we will lose democracy in the United States, you need to catch up with the news. We lost democracy. So I asked this question by tweet, do you want to live in a system in which bullies, literally physical bullies, decide who will be president? You are living in that system. Right now, according to hundreds of witnesses.

Anyway, it's a different horror show every day is the point I want to make. day is the point I want to make. But in the episodes we listened to, he went to a genuinely dark place at one point with all these arguments. So maybe we should go there. Absolutely. Yeah. So when you're talking about all these, there's no fair elections, there's no real democracy, and there hasn't been a fair election in 60 years. This is something Rudy Giuliani says at some point. And Rudy Giuliani says if Philadelphia had a fair election this time, it's the first time in 60 years.

Why don't you listen to him? Because listen to the experts. So what's the point anyway? Is there any alternative? Let's say what Scott thinks. Our process is now maybe 20 rich people fighting it out for control. It's 20 rich people fighting it out for control. It's 20 rich people fighting it out for control. That is our system. Is it worse than like an actual democracy? Probably not. Probably not.

Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot more where this comes from of this. Probably not. Probably not. Yep. Yep. So there's a lot more where this comes from of this. So why don't we work our way through these, Chris? And yeah, hear where it leads. Yeah. So let's see the dark places that he goes with these arguments. You're a little bit used to it already, aren't you?

Think about how you felt the first time you heard that Trump could win the election without winning the popular vote and without winning the electoral college, and that it would be perfectly legal and constitutional, and constitutional. And it wouldn't even be an aberration. It would be the way the Constitution was designed to work. Yeah. So we've come a long way from that friendly sip of coffee at the beginning.

Hey, Chris. Yeah, yeah. We're starting to talk about, like, I mean, you know, to try and inject some degree of charity towards them. Like, there are legitimate points he makes about that there's a limited amount of families and influence who tend to get elected in America and in most countries, right there uh and that democratic systems often do have these components of them which are quite arcane and and sometimes seem anti-democratic like the house of lords in the uk or potentially the uh the electoral college yeah the electoral college that so so yes he's highlighting to some extent things that people can take issue with. But the way that he's doing it is more like, how silly to think we live in a democracy. It's all a sham anyway.

And you thought the system was fair? No, you see now that it's all just a ridiculous show for your benefit. So who cares? Yeah. So what's next? I know what's next, but shall we hear him leading us to the inevitable step by step? Yes, let's listen to it. It's not a democracy. It's not any kind of a dictatorship, clearly. But it's definitely a war between oligarchs and persuaders. There's this hidden underground war of, you know, now you've got the data analysts who are coming in like an

infantry. You know, the Republicans send in the data analysts. It's just like a war. You know, they said, all right, you know, we got the tanks over here. We better call in the air support over here. We've got the data analysts. Move the data analysts in. That's right. So it's a very dark view that he's putting forward, and it's really one that really justifies just the naked use of power and rhetoric.

He contrasts people like him, persuaders, against oligarchs or what you could call them elites. And his point is that he's trying to convince his listeners that they do not live in a democracy. You'd have to be a fool to think that America was any kind of democracy. Really all that matters is the exercise of power, yeah, whether it's through oligarchic systems of influence or the kind of rhetoric that he's doing.

And really his point is, is in the end it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the election was, had any kind of evidence or fraud and so on. He's doing his best to undermine the confidence of his listeners in American democracy. And he's, to my mind doing his best to support the idea that really anything goes to maintain power for for your side yeah and like in some respect it's almost it sounds farcical about oligarchs and their armies of persuaders and the data analysis infantry.

But it does reflect such a bleak and cynical worldview and one that I don't think is actually reality. It might be the reality for people like Steve Bannon and Scott Adams and various other political factors who see the world through who can be manipulated and what levers the pool and McConnell kind of figure, right? It's all about power and the exercise of power and the ways to keep power. And of course, real politic is an actual thing that you have to be concerned about. But the absolute vacuum of genuine values or belief in institutions and systems of democracy and so on, it's just, yeah, it's horrible.

It's so bleak. Yeah, yeah. So let's hear that almost final clip about whether he thinks maybe, whether democracy is really the best system for the United States. Yeah, since this system is so crap, what is maybe a better system that we'd be happier with? If our system is, as I say, not a democracy,

but rather is a competition between oligarchs, is that worse? If you had a choice of a benevolent dictator or a very flawed democracy where the wrong person could get elected, which one's a better system? If you knew, and of course this is the hard part because you can't guarantee that a dictator is benevolent.

Which is better better a benevolent dictator or democracy it's very hard it's you know 50 50 like let me think about that yeah so all right so stepping back a little bit and just thinking about what he's doing here i mean because we've we've talked a lot about all the individual ways in which he does this kind of rhetoric but the the his method the methods that he uses, which when we're not fans of, I think it's fair to say, but it's also useful, I think, to think about what he's arguing for, what is exerting his talents, uh, to, to what aim. And it's, it's clearly to one, um, just completely demoralize, uh, any confidence his listeners might have that they live in any kind of free and

fair democracy. It's not only this election was unfair and rigged, but all elections are. And I said this to you before, but the thing that kept going through my mind was this character from Lord of the Rings, this advisor to, now I've forgotten the name of the king. Theon. Theon. this advisor to now forgotten the name of the king theon theon theon thank you yeah worm tongue this horrible slimy advisor that just whispers in this guy's ear and just gradually bit by bit day after day erodes his confidence in himself and also his belief that there are any that there is any such thing as something that's that's true. And there's nothing but the raw exercise of power,

which is, of course, the evil. He's just like that. He's just... He is. In episodes and at the start of this one, we kind of highlighted that it's difficult with Scott Adams, more so than it's been with anyone else, to stand significant amount of charity.

And the reason is because he's just such a repellent snake. That's it. Yeah. I know that that's an ad hominem and an attack, but like, if you've made it this far and you don't see why that's a fair assessment of the man, I can't help you. I even think by his own logic that it's kind of fine to paint him as like that because under his system, all that matters is if I can convince people that that's true. So it doesn't matter what techniques I need to use to do that and, you know, undermine his character or that kind of thing. So by his rules, ad hominems, unfair attacks, anything like that, it all goes because

it's just about persuasion. Who can persuade people better? Yeah, I completely agree with that assessment. A writer whose name alludes to me right now has talked about postmodern conservatism. Do you remember the name of the chap? No. That's okay. But it's a thing. Trump obviously personifies that. But a lot of other people have really gotten on board with this. And they sort of pay lip service to this idea of logical reasoning and evidence and so on, but they so quickly undermine it and undercut it. And Scott Adams, you're completely right,

which is that he just personifies this complete relativistic idea, which of, of just whatever you can convince people of whatever power you can exert is right. And it's just a power-based might is right way of looking at the world. And yeah, he's a snake. So, you know, we, we try to be fair and even handed with the people that we look at, but I think Scott Adams is going to be the one that, um, the people that we look at, but I think Scott Adams is going to be the one that, the exception that proves the rule, because I've got nothing, I've got nothing good to say about him. Yeah, and I've got a nice illustration of this point, maybe to lead us to like the final conclusions, although maybe we're offering those now, but where he talks about the upcoming

Georgia election, right? And his view of what Republican strategy might be in that election. So let me just play this clip to cap things off. Because if the Republicans used their same techniques and the Democrats knew it, what would they do? Because they couldn't really call them out for the technique because their entire argument is that these techniques can't work. Not that they didn't work, that they can't. It just isn't possible. So again, I'm not recommending

it because it's breaking the law. I never recommend breaking the law, but it would be funny. I'm just saying it would be funny. I don't recommend it. Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice disclaimer. You love disclaimers like that, don't you? Yeah, I do. They just warm my soul. In case it wasn't clear there, he's saying that they should engage in voter fraud and steal the election. And then just one other thing, Matt, is that he also makes another point that if the Republicans lose those elections, that because they're expected to win, the only explanation can be voter fraud. And that the Democrats would have engaged in that because they've just got away with it. But then here we have them like suggesting the Republicans should do it to win, but then saying, you know, but he's not suggesting that. So any outcome where the Republicans lose is illegitimate. And any way that they use to win is legitimate. That's it.

And any way that they use to win is legitimate. Yes. That's it. It's like the catch-22. Well, that's what I meant before by the naked exercise of power where really nothing matters apart from winning and convincing people. Yeah. So I will say, Matt, we've got like about, you know,

we have another hundred clips that we could play of him being a smug asshole and undermining confidence and making contradictory claims and arguments. But I want to stop talking about him as soon as possible. Oh God. Yeah, me too. Me too. So I'll offer very brief final thoughts

and then you can say whatever you like about him. I think my position on him is already evidently clear, but I'll just emphasize that a lot of what he does is based around this kind of cynical, just asking questions. That's all he does.

And at some points, he actually says out loud, I'm just asking questions. I'm just asking questions. But it's all about sowing doubt. And at some points he actually says out loud, I'm just asking questions. I'm just asking questions. But it's all about sowing doubt. And this is an episode that should show people that just asking questions is a rhetorical strategy that people use. It isn't this innocent, you know, open-minded thing.

He has an ideology and he's pushing it. The fact that it's worded as a question doesn't matter. And then the second thing is that the sheer amount of contradictory and the sheer amount of arguments that he can issue and that contradict each other, which undermine the points, and that still there will be a large audience who treat him as if he's an intellectual, as if he's a wise guru. That should tell you again that within these realms of gurus, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're not consistent, if your arguments aren't logical, if you're openly partisan and ideological, you'll still be able to keep followers and still be treated by various

other people as if you're somebody with a reasonable position. And I hope it's clear, he isn't. That's me. That's all I've got to say. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I co-sign every single one of those statements. So let me think about what I could add to that. I think I'm just going to stick to my gut feelings a little bit because we can delineate all of the problems in his arguments, and they are many, but in the end, you can just sum it up by as being completely cynical rhetoric. He will literally say anything, no matter how contradictory or absurd that sounds persuasive in order to further his partisan goal, which is Trump and conservatives winning at all costs. I'm not quite sure why he cares so much about Trump and the Republican Party winning at

all costs because he's so cynical. He seems to have so little faith in literally everything, including Republicans. I can't imagine actually exactly what his motivations are. But one thing is for sure, all of his argumentation is directed to one goal, which is to do everything he can to create more cynicism and sow more doubt in the minds of his listeners, to bring them around to a worldview that their entire political system is hopelessly corrupt, and that nothing matters except for the raw exercise of power, and that anything goes, anything is permissible and nothing matters in terms of respect for institutions or processes or evidence or any of those things

all that matters is winning and i find him the exactly like worm tongue in lord of the rings i find him the most despicable horrible person i've ever listened to. He's repellent. He's repellent. So I feel sorry in some respect. I mean, not in some respect. I genuinely feel sorry for inflicting this upon people. But I think it's useful to look at people like him, because even, you know, with the coronavirus, the nihilism and stuff we looked at, like it didn't feel good.

But you're able to, you know, joke about it and stuff we looked at, like it didn't feel good, but you're able to, you know, joke about it and stuff. But it's been hard on this episode because, because it's just so bleak, um, because he's such an ass. So the, uh, yeah, I'm, I apologize. And the next episode, I think we need a palate cleanser of some type. Every time we do this, we end up getting like somebody who, you know, we'll probably end up with like a neo-Nazi Holocaust by accident. But yeah, I think we deserve it, Matt, after this. Yeah, I definitely agree.

I didn't. Yeah, we didn't. You can tell listeners that we didn't enjoy listening to Scott. And we're sorry that the episode was such a downer. Oh, one point. So one person who recommended Scott and I said... What's his name, Chris? What's his name?

I just want to say Willard from Twitter, thank you very much. You bastard, Willard. I'm going to find out. I will find you. I'm going to do my Northern Irish accent. There's your credit for this. Look what you did. But also many people requested

that we cover him. And who knows, maybe we will again in the future. But yeah, it'll be hard to top him um that that's all i would say yeah i'll say that too hard to talk okay well good let's let's draw a line under this um this is like the like bill and ted go to hell or something like that this has been a dark, dark tunnel, but I'm happy we've got to the other end of it. I've written that.

I kind of think he's going to just, you know, be stuck in my head for the rest of the week. But yeah. Yeah. He's living rent free in our minds now. He is. Okay. So we don't have the next Guru to announce yet

because all of the options that we were considering are kind of also terrible and we may need to recharge with someone like a little out of left field so uh watch twitter um and we'll make the announcement but uh yeah thanks for enduring this with us and sorry if it wasn't as you know light-hearted it may have been in previous weeks. We'll do better next time. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you.