The Boyscast with Ryan Long - LOSERTHINK with Scott Adams

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, the author of a ton of books, and a thinker for the times. patreon.com/theboyscast for extra episodes and early releases. @scottadamssays @ryanlongcomedy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And you can tell our friends, and they can have my things when we're dead. We are here, the boys cast with Ryan Long with the great Scott Adams. How are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you doing? Good. Dude, so I mean, I've heard about you for forever, right? And it was cool to get you on here. So let me, okay, let me tell you how I, my synopsis of've heard about you for forever, right? And it was cool to get you on here. So let me tell you my synopsis of what kind of your career was because you've had this crazy career, and you tell me if that's how you see it. So you're the creator of Dilbert, and then you're an author. You wrote all these books.

You were kind of like a speaker. You were doing all these speaking engagements, and you had a cartoon. You had some TV shows, And then during that time, you were kind of part of the whole like lifestyle design world. I remember you kind of knew people like Tim Ferriss and all that world. You're a bit of part of that world. And then you kind of wrote this big piece essentially saying that Trump was going to win. And he's describing the hypnosis techniques he was doing and why you saw them as better than what other people were doing and why you thought he was going to win.

And that sort of changed the trajectory of your career and you kind of became this big political commentator as well. Yeah, I'm not sure other people think I'm a big political commentator, but it's certainly how I spend my time. It's what's getting me in the most trouble recently. So, yeah, it was sort of the weirdest thing about that career trajectory is that it is exactly where I saw myself at age 14. to explain that I imagined my entire life career, including becoming a cartoonist and then passing through that to some other role that I imagined was very similar to what I'm doing right now, but I got here by accident. So it makes me question the whole nature of reality, I have to say. So what do you mean by that? Do you mean in terms of the political commentary, like you kind of were thinking like that and you were going through all those concepts and that's, but it took that longer

way to get there. Is that what you mean by that? Yeah. I wasn't thinking of it specifically politically, but rather that I would have some kind of role talking about life and reality and what's what, and that it would go beyond cartooning. It just turned out to be a Trump-related connection that I certainly didn't see coming. Yeah, so, I mean, it's kind of, because you wrote this theory on comedy that I really like, too,

so there was a lot of, you know, when you were even making Dilbert, you're saying a lot about the world in those cartoons so you're sort of doing it but just not as overtly right yeah humor transformed or what makes what people consider funny changed a lot and it has always changed during history so if you look that say a vaudeville comedian it doesn't really translate today. It's not what you'd want to hear so much. And if you looked at, say, the humor of the first Saturday Night Lives, you know, the original Saturday Night Lives. Yeah. Really, their humor

was about saying things you weren't supposed to say. That was mostly what the humor was. It's like, oh, I can't believe they said that on TV. But now we're sort of beyond shock. So vaudeville doesn't work. It just seems corny. Shock doesn't work because there's nothing that shocks us anymore. So humor became reality. The real world and humor just sort of merged. Now, it started with Dilber, I would say. I mean, started around the time of Dilber. It started with Dilber, I would say. I mean, it started around the time of Dilber. But I found my humor simply describing a heightened version of real events. Oh, this is really happening at your work. I'll just exaggerate it and put in a space alien or something to make it interesting. But you see that now with politics, the thing that amuses me the most, the thing that will make me laugh the most is the news and social media and what it does with the news and the memes and the funny back and forth. So I think reality and humor just became the same thing. Yeah, that's how you see it well what's the pillar because you're you said

that um you know it's the things you're not supposed to say but in your theory there's seven right which i always thought it was funny because okay i'm gonna i'm gonna say them but you always it was this is the the theory so this is this theory i always thought was really cool and the fact that you included cuteness because i think a lot of times people will, a comedian will be kind of annoying you and you'll be like, why? And you're like, because he's trying to be cute. And the way that you described it is you kind of take all these

and then you put them together like in different forms and that's what makes funny. And it's cleverness, naughtiness, bizarreness, cruelness, cuteness, and recognizability, right? Yeah, so there's the six dimensions of humor. And if anybody wants to look into them, yeah, you can just Google my name and six dimensions of humor and it'll pop up. But the idea was years ago, I noticed that there was a pattern. I had been writing humor for a while, but even I didn't know why some things

were funny and some things weren't. It was sort of like brute force. I would just run through a lot of ideas and then one of them would make me laugh and I'd say, oh, well, if I laughed, maybe somebody else laughed. There was no science to it whatsoever. But eventually I noticed a pattern, which is that in order for something to be funny, it had to have at least two of those six elements. So it didn't matter which two. So it could be, let's say, cute, but also bizarre. And that would be, let's say, the old comic, The Far Side. It was animals being cute, but they were talking like people

and doing things that people do, and that's bizarre. And it was often clever. So there'd be a clever element so the the best cartoons in the world would consistently have three elements a joke only needs two and you'll laugh at it if you can get four of those elements into one kind of joke you've got a world class property and only a few people have ever done it. The comic Calvin and Hobbes. And they didn't live to tell the tale. Well, it didn't last long. Calvin and Hobbes is one of those.

If you look at the drawing, it's insanely cute. You know, the character of the tiger, it's bizarre because the tiger talks and the kid is smarter than the kid and all that. It's clever because the, you know, the situations are often clever, but then he'll also have some cruelty, like something will happen to somebody they get hit with a snowball. He's misgendered or something like that. It's a terrible cruelty such as that. But the,

but the point is that the reason that Calvin and Hobbes was a gigantic smash hit was that he started with something that was cute and sort of bizarre. So he only had to add one element, and he was already a world-class cartoon, and sometimes he would add two. And then you'd say, whoa, I can't do that. What did you do? How did you make that so good? And it's really just the formula. He did four out of six and he did it consistently. Hey, can I add a pillar that I thought that might be added to the mix? Okay. Because if you look at all those pillars, one that I thought could be explained, and even when you're talking about the news,

is truth. Because an element of, oh, that's so true. true like if you said something so a lot of times in satire when i'm doing comedy on stage like that doesn't need that but sometimes that's the other element that you're adding on stage or was that that's one of the six so that would be covered under recognizability oh see so i saw recognizable as nostalgia a lot of times like because oh no so yeah it's exactly like you used it as something that's true to your actual experience so what would uh you know because there's a lot of comics for example that their whole act is like remember the 90s like do you guys remember yo-yos? And they're getting big laughs off. Is that cute or is that, what would that fit in there under this, like that sort of nostalgia? Well, yeah, I would say that would be recognizable.

You're saying, oh, yeah, I remember I had that toy when I was a kid or something. It just takes you to that place. And one of the things you'll learn is that people care more about recognizable than they do about most of the other elements which is why the news became comedy because you recognize the news is like oh i was just talking about that thing and here's a joke about it oh i was just laughing with my friends about that thing that trump or somebody said and now here's a joke about that thing that Trump or somebody said, and now here's a joke about that very thing. So I do another comic called Robots Read News. And I put it, sometimes it's on Twitter, but mostly I put it in behind a paywall subscription at locals.com. And it's just a robot who never moves. He's just reading the news. And I have him just read the news from

something that happened that day. And I can add almost anything to it. And people will say, that's the funniest thing you've ever written. And it's because I hit that recognizable thing at the right time. It's not good enough that they recognize it. It's like, I'm thinking about it right now. And then here was your comic. So the fact that I can produce it within, I can write one of those within 10 minutes of sitting down and it's published to the world, 10 minutes from beginning to end to full worldwide distribution. So people are getting it really fresh. Within hours of seeing the news, they'll see a joke about it. And they just love that. There's the freshness of it gives a little extra kick. Yeah, you've really figured out how to systemize making your comedy, eh? That's what I do. In fact, I'm sitting right here next to

my new Wacom Cintiq. It's a, this gigantic drawing surface that you, that you draw cartoons on these days. You know, we don't do it on paper anymore. It's very cool. The, um, okay. So if we're going to say,

I know that you kind of always get probably blocked into talking about this stuff a lot, but where are you at on Trump now? Since that be kind of became the, like your main talking point? Not your talking point, but the main thing everyone was talking to you about. But in your opinion, where is he at right now? Is he going to win, and do you like him or not like him?

Well, I would be super, super surprised if he doesn't win comfortably, because every sign except for the fake polls are saying that he's going to win. I mean, basically everything is lining up for a win except the polls. And some of those we don't trust. I was just reading an article about one of the ways that you can poll for Trump because you assume people are lying. Instead of saying, who are you going to vote for? Some clever pollsters are starting to ask,

who do you think your neighbor will vote for? And you usually know who your neighbor will vote for, right? Or I suppose you would say you don't know. But they find that they consistently get more vote, more Trump support if somebody's talking about somebody that they know instead of themselves because the assumption there is that people will lie. They don't want to admit who they're voting for. I think you win. Okay, yeah. And what's so different about this time is that we don't have

to guess what he would be like as a president. You can just look at it and say, okay, those first, you know, three and a half years or whatever, do you like those? Because if you want to get more of that, that's how you get it. And I always, from the very beginning, I had this assumption about him that he was what I call an expensive president. But sometimes you need to hire a hitman. It's not always about consulting with your rabbi or your minister. Sometimes you need a hitman because if you need to kill somebody, that's your problem. You got to hire a hitman and he might be expensive and it might be, there might be a problem, but sometimes you just got to kill somebody.

Now it's a bad analogy because he's not there to kill people. Was he there to kill? Well, ISIS, for example. And you wanted him to do the things that you thought other people wouldn't do because they weren't bold enough. They weren't

the kind of risk takers that he is. I mean, you said that about TikTok, right? Like you said that, you kind of tweeted that. You're like, oh, but there's no way Biden would have got rid of TikTok. And you saw that as a good thing. Exactly. Yeah. And I doubt that anybody else would have beaten ISIS so handily the way he did.

I think that even the decisions you're seeing now about him pushing forward with a Supreme Court choice, it's exactly why he got elected. Because people said, okay, in this situation, you could see how somebody would say, I think I'll be a statesman. Maybe it's better for the country if I wait. But people said, no, screw that. We just want the guy who's going to take the free money that's on the table. He's going to push open every door and he's going to break some stuff. And I think people knew, yeah, he's going to ruffle some feathers. He's going to break some dishes. But we're not worried about dishes.

We're worried about world war. We're worried about the economy. We're worried about world war. We're worried about the economy. We're worried about the big stuff. So I think he's unusually good on the big stuff and unusually bad on the bad stuff. In fact, I've said that what Trump is universally bad at everything easy. And by easy, I mean anything Biden could do. So what Biden can do is talk in public, read some stuff from the teleprompter, and not get himself in trouble

because he just reads what's on the teleprompter. Can Trump do that? Well, I mean, physically he could do it, but will he ever do it? No. No, because it's just not who he is. And unfortunately, you don't get a choice of the Trump who always says the polite things in public, and then also gets done, you know, the hitman kind of big stuff that you need somebody to do. He's the only choice he had. So I don't mind the mean tweets and the ruffled feathers if I can get some big stuff done. Do you see people having an absolute meltdown over RBJ? My buddy at his work, he was like, people called in sick from work and they're like, I can't come in because RBJ died today.

Yeah, there is something going on. And I guess that's something as, is Trump derangement syndrome. I do think that historians and psychologists will look back at this as mostly a time of mass hysteria, because you can kind of tell the difference. You can tell the difference between a difference of opinion or a difference of priority. It's like, well, I can see why you'd want that policy, but I have slightly different priorities. So you know what it looks like when people are

disagreeing on policy. And this isn't that. Whatever this is, has nothing to do with that. It's pure hysteria. Yeah. It's a fundamental disagreement of the way that we should live their lives. And on top of that, the each side, well, one side probably more than the other thinks that once they win, you should have to do it too. I think that's where all the problems come in. Well, you mean, you mean the other side wants you to conform to what they want? Yeah. I mean, the problem like isn't right now, a lot of times that people want freedom to do something. It's they want to take away your freedom to not do it.

And I think that's where a lot of the problems come in, you know? Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a freedom difference, but everybody wants to have their freedoms and deny you yours. I mean, that's really what it is. I don't think there's anybody who wants everybody to have freedom. There's only people, if you're being honest, I want my freedom, but I think I'd like you to be, maybe have a little less so it doesn't bother me so much, you know? It's like, yeah, I want the, maybe I want the freedom to not wear a mask in some

situations, but you know, wouldn't it be great if you didn't have the freedom to loot? They also think, I was kind of thinking about it about maybe this is getting like esoteric or whatever but i feel like people want all their freedom to come for free as well you know they and you start pointing out freedom and they go well what about this and you're like yeah there's gonna be things like it's not there's not gonna be any you're like you know so that that's the whole antifa and uh black lives, less so Black Lives Matter, but Antifa, because they're talking about a world that they wouldn't want to live in. If they got everything they wanted, it's like, let's say you get everything you want, Antifa,

we'll get rid of this government and everything else. Now answer this question, where does money come from in your world? And you know, the first answer is, well, there's so many rich people. Yeah. Dad, right? Well, there's so many rich people, they'll share it. It's like, but you realize that in your world, they'll stop making money, right? Because there's no point. They're just making money and giving it away. They'll just, they'll say, well, my life is the same if I work or if I don't work. So why would I work? they'll say, well, my life is the same if I work or if I don't work, so why would I work? So I don't think people have quite thought it through. And honestly, there's something going on where young people have not matured as quickly as they used to. I think that's real. Do you think

that's real or is that just me being an old guy? And, you know, every old guy says these youth cut their hair, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, I was having that conversation recently and it is true, but it's not so much that young people haven't matured as much as there's like a culture that other people should solve your problems. other people should solve your problems. So it's kind of hard when you have, when you have young people and they, you know, finish school. And then there's this idea that the media and everyone's kind of telling you that, you know, these problems should be solved for you. This isn't your fault like that. So it's, I think it's the culture of, you know, the Western society or whatever, that's more pushing that on people than this idea that people are somehow different in this generation. But there is one difference that I have empathy for, which is when I got out of college, I got out with no student debt, which would be rare today. And I could go literally walk

into any company with a college degree and pretty much get a job almost anywhere. It just had to be a big company. They're always hiring. And that's what I did. Just walked. I literally walked into a bank and said, I just got to San Francisco. I'd like a job in your bank. They hired me before I left. I just walked. I literally walked into the biggest bank and said, well, this looks like the biggest bank. They must have some money. They probably have some jobs. I want to be the wallet inspector.

I stood in line like a customer. I got to the front and said to the teller, you know, I'd like to work here. Can I get a job here? Next thing I know, I'm talking to the boss. Next thing I know, I'm hired. But try to do that today. It's a whole different deal. Just, and then I could afford my own apartment and not my own, but you know,

roommates and stuff. I had my, I had a windowless room with a shared bathroom, but I could afford it. So I can live on my own. The day I walked out of the door with my college degree, I was self-sufficient and that was common back then. I could move across the country and just start a life anywhere I wanted. Yeah. So no, people got a bad deal. That's why it's like, you know, you have to understand where people are coming from. Like there's an entire generation that got a shitty deal, but you know, and this is one of the things

that when it goes back to Bernie Sanders and if you go, okay, so his solution of that is like, Hey, they're giving this crappy thing away. It doesn't help. And it costs a hundred grand. His degree is like, yeah, let's get more people to do that.

And everyone will pay for it. And you know, that kind of my idea, I mean, there's both like you want to kind of culturally change it, but even just from like a market perspective, anyone right now that's like 14 and their mom or dad has a hundred thousand dollars debt and a crappy job a university degree

and like uh in a general arts program like they're not gonna do that so it's you know there's some degree that these things they've sorted themselves out over a generation and then on top of that there's like a culture error but it's it's almost like i always it's a lot of times you're piling bad bricks on top of like this faulty foundation to begin with. Yeah, the whole system just sort of evolved into this ossified mess that was training people to do things that weren't terribly useful. You know, at least the generic kind of college degrees. And I think where it's going to go is some kind of talent stack idea. I introduced this idea.

Yeah, I love the talent stack. And if you simply said, all right, you know, we're going to teach you these sets of skills because they work really well together. Don't know exactly what your job will be, but look, you're going to know sound engineering. You'll know video stuff. You'll know how to communicate to people, you know, several things, you're going to be in pretty good shape. And you can learn those kinds

of skills without four years of college. So I've got a feeling people are going to start being much more directed in their talent stack acquisition. And that is true that there was this, because even back in the day, it's like artists used to be philosophers and they used to build cities. And it was kind of, there was this because even back in the day it's like artists used to be philosophers and they used to build cities and it was kind of there was this idea that someone that was a great thinker you know kind of would be able to do that across fields right and it's I've noticed when I was worst the worst in my life and career is when I was the most hyper focused on one thing you when you were the worst you said yeah when I was the worst, you said? Yeah, when I was the worst

is when I was, let's say I was a comedian, right? And I was only thinking about like writing jokes. And that's what I was thinking about. But I wasn't, I was not really focused on anything else. I wasn't making films. I wasn't doing anything else. I was just this one thing. It was actually when I was the worst at it. Because you zoned in so far that I was losing everything else. Because I kind of feel the same way as you were. You said that, you know, I don't know the exact things, but it was like, maybe I'm not the best cartoonist. Maybe I'm not the best. Well, you can finish it for me.

Right. Yeah. You don't have to be the best at drawing or writing jokes if you can do both of them well enough. There are very few people who can do those two things. That's what it was special yeah so i felt for me i when i was doing videos about like you know different things like i said i'm not the best filmmaker in the world and i wasn't the best at music in the world and i wasn't maybe the best at comedy in the world but i was definitely the best like making

at the intersection of those three and i so i like really did agree with that theory. I think a lot of people. Yeah. You are one of the best examples of that. Anybody's ever going to say exactly right. You know, when I watched your, your videos are hilarious and I'm thinking that's a whole lot of talent to make that, that little video, you know, people don't quite, people don't appreciate how many talents you have to line up to make that work. So. Yeah. Cause it's not like, I don't know politics better than, you know, so many people, you know, I always joke like, you know, I'm this like, you know, making videos of politics, but I'm like, I can't name the senators or anything like that.

But in terms of guys that are good at making videos and that are really funny, it's like, I might have a better, like critical understanding of that sort of stuff. yeah yeah very good example yeah so you think that they might move towards in school that would be a positive if they started thinking about that people need to have like intersectional skills that'd be a good way to a good intersectionality yeah i've yeah I've actually offered that we should do an experiment with, say, some urban class of, let's say, just for example, it's a bunch of 10-year-old black kids in some urban place where they don't have as much opportunity. in there and say, all right, here's our deal. We're going to teach you strategy, life strategy. So you'd learn about how to build a, you know, a useful talent stack, how to have a system instead of just, you know, goals, you know, be great to have a goal to be the best NBA player, but how about a system where you're developing skills that could take you in a variety of different ways

in case that NBA thing doesn't work out. And just teach them that success is primarily about strategy and that you can be poor and disadvantaged, but if you do the right stuff, your odds of success are close to 100%. And I don't think people know that. I think they think, oh, I'm black. I've been told that I've got disadvantages. The police are going to kill me.

I just feel like you would think that you didn't have a way out. But in fact, we do have a country where if your strategy is right, your path out is very clear. I mean, it's wide. There's nothing in the way. You just have to get on that path and walk down it. It's just this big superhighway waiting for you. But if you don't know it's there, you're not going to find it accidentally. You know, you don't accidentally get on the right path. Somebody needs to tell

you if you're a 10 year old kid. You know what else, Scott, is that I have this, I see this with other people that are younger than me a lot. And when they're working on something, maybe that'd be making videos or whatever it would be. And they kind of don't see where it's going. And they're like, it's not working. And they're like, oh, so I should move on to the next thing. And you're, it's, you're like, no, you don't know where it's going to go yet. Like if you really actually sit down and develop the skill and you spend four years and it turns out to be a waste of time, it won't be a waste of time because, you know, even like my friend, uh, Danny Polshuk, who's some of the guy in the videos, he, he was, you know, he's big into stocks

and he's, that's how he made a lot of his money and blah, blah. And not that that's useless because you're making money. But now my friend who did the hard times, um, that I did all these videos with, he started this website about comedy website about stock finance. And because he knew me, he was like, Danny's the only comedian we know that's like an expert at that. He's like, Hey, do you want to become the editor of this magazine? And now he's kind of running this thing. So it's like you, you is, if you have three or four talent stacks, like you don't almost know when they're going to come in handy. So it's, but I think people have that hard to trust the process sort of situation. Yeah. That you also remind me of another tip I like to

give people for success, which is practice things you're good at in public. Make sure people see it. So the fact that somebody is making videos that are put on the internet just automatically is a job interview. So your life should be a continuous job interview. That's another tip I got.. It was just the best advice you'll ever get from a random guy on an airplane. He said that as soon as he gets a job, he looks for his next job and that his job is to get a better job. You know, at the same time, he's trying to do the job he's hired for, but he never loses sight that his job is not to make his employer rich. sight, loses sight that his job is not to make his employer rich. That's also good. It's also good, but that's not his job. His job is to make him rich. And he says, the moment I get a new job,

I start looking for the next job that's better. And I just never stopped that process. And he was a CEO of a major company by the time I talked to him. He said, that's all I did. I just never accepted that my job was my job. My job is to get a better job. See, I've, yeah, he said, that's all I did. I just never accepted that my job was my job. My job is to get a better job. See, I've, yeah, I mean, I guess you can only do that sometimes before you get a bet so many times before you get a little bit of a reputation in the industry. But well, you know, you would think, but as long as somebody offers you that next best job, yeah, you'd be dumb. Not, I've always, I've always kind of thought about that myself. Like anytime I've worked for anyone else, of thought about that myself like anytime I've worked for anyone else like I understood this was just like to build capital or even on like acting if it's not my thing I always you know I try to do that thing where it's like do things for one

reason so I try to do fine if I'm doing this for money or if I'm doing this for opportunity whatever it is but I understand those are just to help build my next thing. So yeah, whether if you're working at a company or whatever, a lot of times it's just to build a skill or the network or whatever. But I think a lot of people do forget that and you just started like working for someone and that's how you kind of become miserable, especially in today's age when you can kind of see it all, right? Yeah. Yeah. When I started doing my Periscopes, my live stream that I do on the Periscope app the first time i did it was just to find out more about it it was like oh there's this thing called live stream it's

pretty easy let's see you know i turned it on and i think you know four people showed up to watch me and i talked to them and then uh then pretty soon you know i thought well what if, you know, I thought, well, what if I, you know, add this or try this or talk about this? And now it's, you know, 100,000 people a day listen to me on live stream. Amazing. It's one of the most, probably one of the most influential live streams in the world right now, I would say, just because of who watches it. I hear privately who's watching me every day. Really? Ivanka? Among others. Jim Carrey. Yeah. There are a lot of people who have watched it. And none of that was some master plan in the

beginning. It was all about building my talent stack. Cause I thought, well, clearly I should know more about this video live streaming thing. And I just practiced that it would no particular end in sight. It turned into two book deals, which makes the book before that sell more because when you look at the old one as well. And now I've got this thing I mentioned on Locals, which turned into a whole different business model. So all of this happened just from me saying, you know, there's one skill that looks like it would be useful on top of my other skills. And bam, it was super useful.

Oh, it's crazy. How many books ago was loser think was that three ago loser think is loser thinks the newest one oh that's the newest one okay because that was my favorite title that's like so funny oh good i'm glad you like that uh before that was when that's what girl a loser think is just um you think like a woman. I believe that was your thesis of the book, right? No, I've never said that. You made that up. No, a loser think, the way I defined it, is I tried to make it not being dumb. Because what I noticed is there were a lot of people who, by any objective measure, had high IQs, but kept saying things that appeared to me to be dumb.

And if I assume the problem is not on my end, like, what's going on here? And there was a consistent pattern, which is the people who had small talent stacks, typically, if they were in the arts, they tend to be writers and artists and musicians and stuff. Oh, I like this. They tend to be writers and artists and musicians and stuff. Oh, I like this. They simply did not have exposure to the disciplines of how to compare things to make decisions. And comparing things accurately so you know what you're comparing to the right thing is a skill that you don't naturally have. You're not born with it. But if, like me, you have a degree in economics, you were taught that for four years.

Hey, you have a degree in economics? Me too. Yeah. Yeah. Do you? Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe that explains why we're here. So then I got an MBA and I worked in the corporate world for years and years. So I learned. I became a clown. I became a cartoonist.

Yeah, exactly. I had a joke I used to tell on stage, which was, I'd say, if you take enough years of economics, you will become a cartoonist. Because you start out saying, well, this is an awesome thing. I would like to understand this skill. And then when you understand it enough, you realize it's all bullshit. And you're like i'm a cartoonist now you know smarter smarter smarter best economist in the world now i'm a cartoonist

because i realize how much how much bullshit this is and it all looks absurd and you think you know i can make jokes about this but i don't think i can use it for much else yeah but but but the but but the useful part that comes out of it is consistently learning how to compare things, how to look at money over time. So you're not comparing a dollar you get 10 years from now to a dollar today. They're not the same. If you're trying to decide, is the president doing a good job on the coronavirus? I keep annoying people by saying, you know, you can't compare him to New Zealand. If it were possible, and you could switch the two leaders and then do a simultaneous test as if we had never had a coronavirus before, just to see how those

leaders would do if they were in the other country, then you'd know how much is there something about the country and how much is it about the leader's decisions. But you can't do that. So you end up with this absurd thing about imagining how President Trump should have done in your own imagination, and then comparing it to what happened and say, well, it's not as good as what I imagined it would be. That's not how you compare things. That's not the right way to do it. The right way to do it is if you don't have the right comparison, you say, I don't know. That's it. That's the end. If you can't compare it, you're done. If you just make up some comparison because you need to compare it, that's not the way you do it. Yeah, especially

even when you look at, there's just so many factors that you don't even think of. Like, when I was thinking about this the other day of why America is different than other countries on some, it's like, one of the things that you wouldn't even mention is that the fact that these are predominantly like agnostic countries, right? Whereas Americans is still like most of the people here are still religious. And you talked about, like, you know, when you're talking about abortion or anything like these are still huge factors. Right. So there's so many things that there's 20,000 factors that are very, very important that you don't even think about. Right. To make them just a completely different makeup.

Right. And if you're looking at, let's say, Americans wearing masks and you say hey there are three Asian companies countries where the mask compliance was nearly a hundred percent so they have better leaders right because there are three Asian countries 100% mask wear good leadership actually no they already well first of all they started with a lot of us. Secondly, there's an enormous cultural difference. If you say to Americans, look, Americans, we've done all the science, and we can say with 100% certainty, every single expert agrees, if you take this pill, you'll live 10 years longer, and there's no downside. 20% of Americans will say, nope.

Nope. Because, because freedom, you are not making me take a pill. Yeah. I'll take a pill if I want to and I don't want to. I'll take a pill if it's Viagra, but I don't know. But Americans reject authority automatically. Yeah. It's just a reflex. I like that. I like that. Yeah. Right. Americans reject authority automatically. It's just a reflex.

I like that. I like that. Yeah, right. It's our superpower. So you can't take our superpower away without losing everything that comes with it, right? So if you say, I would like America to be the kind that would listen to their leader, listen to the experts, and we would all just mask up because the experts told us to. That's all we need to hear. The experts told us to, our government told us to, we're masking up.

Get me out of that fucking country as fast as possible. I mean, I did get out of that country. I was Canada. Now, in my case, I'm pro-mask. I think risk-reward, it looks like it's the right balance. So I'm pro-mask, but I still don't want to live in a country where everybody else is. I mean, there is a point where you go to a store and they put a mask on, and you're like, yo, F you.

There's a point where it's just ridiculous. But I like the authoritarian guys or the against authority guys, even when they're like super ridiculous. I just liked that they exist. Like some of my friends are just like, you know, they're trying to put stuff in our drinking water. They've got microchips everything. And I'm like, hell yeah, dude, fight the power. Yeah. Yeah. I, I feel the same way when I,

when I look at the crazy conspiracy theorists. I always have two thoughts. Number one, they're completely wrong. Number two, how many times have I thought somebody was completely wrong and they weren't? Yeah, yeah. Every now and then there is a coup to overthrow the government, and it's real. Yeah.

It really happens. Yeah, yeah. If they're right one or ten times, you just got to, you know, pay attention every now and then. At least someone's out there banging the drum. You never know. It's almost like the implicit threat to, you know, how like the guns are an implicit threat to the government.

Like a lot of these conspiracy guys like watching their every move is a bit of an implicit threat to the government. Yeah, it definitely keeps them in line. To me, there's nothing funnier than the fact that conservatives have kept their guns to themselves so far. Like with all the craziness you're seeing, I'm sure there was some militias

who did the open carry thing, but they didn't shoot anybody. And in fact, I think the events with the conservatives who had the open carry thing but they didn't shoot anybody and in fact the the i think the events with the conservatives who had the the open carry carry the weapons and stuff correct me if i'm wrong but they were probably the most peaceful demonstrations of all of 2020 i guess i mean there's a difference between the like conservative demonstration walking where it's like if you saw a bunch of like antifa guys like like coming down with AR 57 and like, it would be a different thing.

Those guys, I guess it was a different culture of the movement. Right. But well, you know, there was, there was a, and also by the way,

there's the reason it's a different movement because they're on the defensive in this particular scenario. Right. Cause the, basically there's people saying we want social change and we're going to do this and that. And then they were basically saying, hey, we're going to come and try to stop this. So don't come around here because we have our guns.

So if it was the other way around. Well, there are different contexts. Some of it was the mask stuff, I think. Oh, you're talking about the mask ones. Yeah, those are just peaceful anti about the mask ones. Yeah, yeah. Those are just peaceful anti-mask stuff. Yeah. Freedom, freedom.

That would be crazy if that one got out of hand. Like, you're like, yeah, the mask protesters brought their guns and it just became a bloodbath. Yeah, you know, so to the point, you know, when I see the militias, you know, I have the dual feeling, which is, oh, this could be a little dangerous, all these people with guns. And in many cases, they may not have the same idea that I do about what's going on in the world and who's trying to screw who.

So I think, well, a little dangerous, all those guns. At the same time, I say to myself, if the shit came down, like the government really just turned on the people in a serious way, those are the guys who are going to make a difference. Yeah, and they're the guys that's stopping it from happening in the first place, right? Yeah, they probably already are the only factor that's keeping the country together. And it's by not doing anything. It's the not doing anything that is the powerful part. Because you know that the moment they decided to do something probably would happen about the same time whatever whatever

such a trick or trigger would be yeah and it would be it would be somewhat conclusive well that was like the one of the most ignorant positions people have it it's like where you just i don't like arguing about guns to like some 20 year old or whatever, but it is funny when people are all, oh, they're going to fight the US government. You're like, they don't have to, you idiot. Like, that's not how it works. It's not how it works. They don't have to fight them.

Like US government can't just go in like kill a bunch of their citizens. That might be unpopular. Well, I even go further and say, let's game out the strategy a little bit. If the government of the United States decided to turn any portion of the military against the citizens, what's the first thing the citizens would do? The first things that they would do is they would take captives of every family member of anybody in government and anybody in the military who was on the wrong side. They would, they would go after the family because they're exposed. And, and you can say, well, that's evil or that's terrible, or, you know, you could hate it. And I'm not saying I'm in favor of it or not in favor.

It sounds like, you know, for a fact though, the plan. Well, yeah, I, I, I didn't make the plan, but how, how hard would it be to figure that out i mean yeah no that's a that's obviously what happened yeah i i haven't thought of that one but i would definitely put that on the list um as far as what's like okay so one of the big ones that i've kind of gone back and forth on i feel like you'll have a good idea on this because i've i've even said from the beginning with trump like the thing that he was probably the most right on was the china stuff and even with with canada when i was there like they do the shadiest shit over there they would have you know they just straight up

have different tariffs coming in and different they were getting like the third world country tariff tax when they're this huge like you know the second biggest power essentially and so it always felt like trump was kind of the right on the china stuff that they're they've got crazy stuff going on so where do you see this in terms of like is this a uh like a essentially like a cold war that's happening right now is it something in the future like where do you see this conflict with china and like what like how should nor how should i think of this as a normal person in my in your opinion I I think China believes and the United States probably believes it too that we both need to be the the leader of the world yeah there's like there's not

enough room for two and China because of its size and its history, et cetera, thinks it's the rightful, let's say, first citizen, that they deserve that position as the most respected, maybe most influential country. And there's reason to believe that that's going to happen eventually just because of demographics and time, et cetera. Math. Yeah, math. So I don't think there's any world in which we are not at least adversaries. I think there's a good chance we will avoid military, direct military, but we're definitely in a hot cyber war. I would say that we're probably fighting in a cyber sense, a persuasion sense, a brainwashing

sense, in all those senses, I think we're in the middle of a pitched World War III, and it's happening right now. And anybody who thinks that those things can't bring down a country, you're not paying attention. Those things today can bring down the country. I'm not sure- Especially when you're already at war in your own country to some degree, culturally. Are we? Are we? Let me ask you this. Are we at war in our own country or did China cause what we're seeing now? I'm not saying they did, but just walk through this. Okay. Yeah, please. Let's say China can make the TikTok algorithm do anything it wants, right? At the moment, they can control it.

So they can make any story or image or message prominent. If they do, they will convince all the people on TikTok that something's true. Those people also go over to Snapchat. There's a lot of crossover TikTok to Snapchat. Suddenly the Snapchat people are affected by these ideas. It's huge. The kids. Exclusively a dick pic app. But anyway, so China already has the ability to mass brainwash through these apps in ways that we would be completely unaware of happened. We would just think, huh, it looks like the polls have changed. It seems people's opinions about this or that have changed, but you'd never know why, but they would know why.

What would be an example of how they would have done that on TikTok? You remember the story of President Trump had a rally that got sold out, but the TikTokers organized to buy a bunch of tickets and then not go. So that was an example where I ask you, would that have been viral if China didn't want it to? If China did not call out that message and say, I think we're going to make this message a thing, see how big this gets. I mean, these apps are definitely like kingmakers right now. You're right. And they're information story kingmakers as well, right? Right. And those people who really know the deep arts, for your audience members who don't know, I'm a trained hypnotist. So the world of

propaganda and brainwashing and persuasion, this is where I do most of my recent writing and research. So what I see, I didn't, but certainly there was something to that book. But China and the other countries do have the ability now through AI and through algorithms and just knowing how persuasion works to start rumors and false messages that can move the world. And I wouldn't be surprised if we learned that Antifa and Black Lives Matter are largely driven by foreign influences. Someday we might find that out.

largely driven by foreign influences. Someday we might find that out. In fact, I would be surprised if that's not the case, because they shouldn't be doing that. Like if you were trying to take down the United States, you would be funding resources into those groups. Of course. So wouldn't you be more surprised if they weren't?

Yeah, I know what you mean. I mean, I've thought of it even to add to that, the one thing that I was kind of like, he never seems to get brought up. If you're like, when we're talking about whether or not they should get rid of TikTok or what has to happen with it, I know that basically the China blocked the sale or whatever, you go,

dude, what do you think like American companies are doing when they're in China? Like, do you think that Facebook's just operating like willy nilly in China? So it's so funny that when people go, oh, American government shouldn't do this. It's like, yeah, but look at what's going on the other way around. Like Facebook has to basically deliver people to like the Chinese government for them to murder from their like direct messages. And they go, yes, sir. Like, oh, my God.

So, yes, sir. And then they come back to Canada and post that like women are great or whatever, but it's like, so they're obviously doing the other way around. So there needs to be at least like, you know, Hey, whatever you're going to do to us, like we have to do the same thing. It's not like you have, we have, yeah. Sort of run amok in our country and not vice versa, I guess. Yeah.

And I think the biggest thing the public doesn't know is that these tools, the persuasion tools and the internet, et cetera, are now stronger than military tools. Because you could take down a country with the right brainwashing and persuasion in a way that you couldn't really, you couldn't conquer China

if we tried to do it militarily without destroying our own country. So people don't understand that these are the real weapons now. We may never have another giant world war because we don't need it. You could take out a country this way and nobody gets killed in the traditional way. How would you get, how would you get to, how would to, if you were America, how would you combat it in China? Get to people, push music to people like punk rock anti-flag, like, screw your government. And then everyone starts to rebel against the government. Well, the beauty of the Chinese model is that they can only survive by keeping out other thought. They have to make sure that criticism doesn't get in,

but I don't know how you keep it out forever. So technology wise, you have to assume that criticism will get in and it should take care of itself because if the Chinese people were fully informed and able to organize, that may be the hard part of the organizing, I think that they would fix things on their own. They just wouldn't put up with it. I mean, how many people in China are aware of what's happening with the Uyghurs? Do they know that their country is selling body parts of political prisoners. They're actually selling organs for transplant. Do they know that?

These are the types of things that I think that if the public just knew what was going on, their government would fall on its own just from information. Well, I guess it would be a tough one. It's hard to get a resistance going

in China, I think like when they kind of, the level of control that they have. Yeah. So, um, Hashtag resistance would be a little harder over there. But it definitely explains, um, explains why they're trying to control their citizens so much, you know, with facial recognition and, you know, no privacy, et cetera. They know they need to. Anything short of that puts a timer on them. Okay. Well, okay. So that's one thing you think Trump's doing good. I wanted to talk about

the like Trump thing for a little bit. And so one of the things that you kind of describe, you know, the way that, you you know he's like a gifted communicator and the way that he manipulates people and but one thing i wanted to um oh you know what could you just describe essentially that for a second like the way that you just the way what essentially what was it that you noticed about him that kind of put became this uh you know viral thing about you and then and like also caused you a lot of trouble probably too? Yeah. I noticed he was what I call a master persuader, somebody who knows the tools of persuasion, which the public generally does not know, but also is willing to use them at the

highest level. It's that willingness to use them and his appetite for risk and his ability to take embarrassment and criticism like nobody's ever ever done in their life so you put all that together plus his persona plus his personality plus his fame you know just all that stuff it was just super powerful and then he had business knowledge as well and entertainment knowledge and they just fit together really well as a powerful thing so what I noticed is that he had the tools of a salesperson, which everybody notices, of course, but he was really good at it. And he does things such as simplicity, making things visual.

For example, when he talks about border security, he doesn't talk about it the way boring people do. They say, well, we should have better security in a variety of ways. It depends which part of, you're talking about. And then you just go, I don't know, something about border security. I wasn't interested. But he says, I'm going to build a wall. And they go, you can't build a wall across the entire border.

It's going to be a wall. No, you can't do that. It's going to be a wall. And you see the wall. And you're arguing against the wall while you're seeing it which is the salesperson's trick you you will it into existence while you're arguing against it because it becomes real because you're seeing it and talking about it until you just see it's like the girl like hey what do you want to have for breakfast tomorrow morning yeah it's that that's uh that's called uh making you think past the sale which is another trick he

does oh that's a different trick so yeah but it's really so simplicity repetition so the trade that would be if in my scenario that would be more like describing the actual sex that's happening and they'd have to picture it yeah well yeah well, yeah. If you described it, yes, that would maybe cause it to be more likely if they liked what they imagined. I guess that's the trick. They have to like what they imagined. Like, ugh, ugh.

That trick would never work for me. No. If a guy did that to you, if a guy came up like me and you it's gonna be greasy and you're like yeah you thought this was gonna help sell it yeah well the one thing so i kind of understand but i guess the trade-off is it because one of the things that like kind of comes with his style of arguing the same as all everyone that you know there's a lot of people that kind of build a career like of arguing the same as everyone that, you know, there's a lot of people

that kind of build a career like this. Is it also it makes everyone hate you though, right? Like when you there's certain the way that you take these risks. So this only works when you get to be like the president or whatever, but in a normal workplace or something, if you kind of operated like that, everyone would just hate you, right? Actually, no. And which is the weird part? Well, I won't say that you won't have haters, because if you're persuasive in any way, let's say you're just a good CEO, you have a ton of haters. If you're Bill Gates, you're Elon Musk, you're Steve Jobs, you've got a lot of haters, and people who have good reasons for hating you in their opinions. So I think that's built into success. There's no such thing as somebody who's, I mean, Mother Teresa had haters.

Mother Teresa, she literally had haters. Maybe not your own company, but yeah. There's somebody I worked with who became the model for the character Alice in my comic strip, who is the tough engineer woman. And she had Donald Trump technique. And one of her techniques was, if you were good to her, in other words, you did something she asked as a coworker, not as a subordinate, she would go to your boss and tell you that tell your boss that you should get a raise. She would buy flowers for you at work. Who does that? And she would make doing the right

thing for her spectacularly rewarding. But if you didn't, she would end you. There was no in between. She will end you. She will go to your boss and say, you got to get rid of this idiot. I mean, I can't get this person to do anything. And she would actually get you fired or certainly hurt your career. So, so what she would do is she would make this gigantic difference between doing what she wanted and what she didn't where everybody else workplace who was also asking you to do stuff, not much difference. You could do what they wanted. Don't do what they want.

You know what I mean, Scott, where I'm like, I kind of understand where she would get what she wants better, but I would hate that person like that. You know what I mean, Scott, where I'm like, I kind of understand where she would get what she wants better, but I would hate that person. And people did, but there were so many people who saw that she could get things done and they wanted those good things to be done too, because usually it's just something good for the company, that they say, you know, that's like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs had a lot of haters too, but look how effective he is. I like that. I appreciate that. So she was actually, she was highly respected.

Her career was great. She was a very successful career. And she was just really, really tough. It's almost like you need to be, like there's a certain type of person that's more comfortable in like the antagonistic energy. You know what I mean? Because some people aren't. And that's a better way to describe that i have one thing sorry i was gonna

say that's why i'm a cartoonist and not a lawyer i was gonna be a lawyer yeah and i realized wait a minute in order for me to win depending on the kind of law somebody has to lose or i have a boring job with paperwork and there's no winners or losers. It's just paperwork. And I thought, no, there's nothing about that. I like, I like a job where if I do a good job, just everybody wins. I agree too. Yeah. And you know, a lot of ways it's like, I get so, you know, attached to, you know, people that are in my life, like kind of helping them be better or whatever.

That the only way to combat that, if you kind of have that natural tendencies is just to have a really small circle because it's too much, you know what I mean? You just have to, like, you can't, I can't have, you can't have 20 people that you kind of have that dynamic with because it's always like infecting your brain or you have to, or you have to train yourself to like ignore people and stuff like that, but it's, then you're not, you know what I mean? Then you're kind of failing in that dynamic or so to speak in your mind. Yeah. It becomes a bigger and bigger problem as you become semi-famous as in my case. Yeah. Probably every day, probably half a dozen people a day will send me long messages about their project

and how can I help them? And I think, well, if I had nothing else to do, maybe so, maybe I'll jump in and give me a little help. But you know, if you've got hundreds and hundreds of people a year asking you to work on their project, just can't do it all. Can't do it all. So how do you, what do you do? Do you, do you, do you systemize it in terms of like, okay, I'm only going to look at those requests once a month or, and then maybe I'm going to take things like, do you have a system or how do you think of that? And how do you deal with it?

Sort of first in first out, you know, I deal with them as they come and I at least I skim everything. So I don't miss anything. Okay. But it would have to be something that really, really hit exactly, you know, something I cared about and was important to the world in some way. But typically it's something that's important. You're not looking for opportunities. You're looking for something that kind of like blows you away.

Like, so it's like, if someone's like, Hey, I want to do this. You're like, I'm actually not really even, but if something comes in, it's like, Oh wow. That like, so it's almost like if you're wowed, then you kind of, that's the factor that might get you involved. Yes. I would say that's generally true, but it's also that I'm at that point in my life where I got pretty much everything I need. So I've taken care of all of my needs. And if it's not,

if it's not useful to other people in a fairly substantial way, not just in a hypothetical or intellectual way, but like really something will be different in your life if I do what I do right, then I'm excited. things that I have a special impact on. Like, yes, I could help. I could bring meals to senior citizens who can't get out of the house. Yeah. Right. But other people can do that, too. And if I if I have any like special thing that I add that could help two people instead of one. You could bring meals to senior citizens and then argue with them about Trump. Change their minds. Yeah. make the world a better place just you could argue with some of the people at the home of on twitter you could show them how to get get twitter to argue i think you know what you that makes sense though what you're describing it's like yeah a lot of times it's the same thing as like if you not the same thing but like when people are like oh i want to help and it's like you've never put

yourself in a position they can help. And it's kind of like, dude, sometimes I can, you know, a lot of times people will ask me like advice on like editing or whatever. And I'm like, I, you don't need me, a guy like me involved in your thing. But if you send me your video afterwards or send me your script in about 30 seconds, I could probably help more than a lot of people will in like four hours. Or if I came and acted in your thing and took my half a day, I can probably give you a note that'll take me a minute and it'll save you lots of time. So it's like also being efficient

with like how you actually help people and how to do it. Yeah, and you've probably found this in your own life that if you're not doing something for other people, you don't really feel good at the end of the day. I don't know how much of this is individual difference, but I suspect not a lot. I suspect that we're all sort of designed by evolution to if you've taken care of your own needs

and you're not taking care of somebody else after that, you should feel empty. And I think people do. Yeah, I think I do agree with that. And I've even, I've kind of like, anytime I'm in a position where things are going good, I kind of feel my natural instinct to now help other people, whether, but you know, that's one of the things that's good about this kind of like business proposition I'm in.

It's like, I actually get to like, even the idea of like doing a show, you get to give all your 10 friends, you know, a job and money and for like, you know what I mean? So bring people on tour and sometimes just straight up give people money but there is a big part of it that that i'm sure you've had that too where you get to kind of like employ people with a cool job and but it's not just giving someone a job it's more like you know a cool thing that they would have done for free and you also get to give them money so there's there's a lot of that baked in that's pretty cool too yeah yeah without that i think life would be sort of empty and dull yeah you know i gotta feel like i'm making a difference when you were saying that

the the thing you're excited about it kind of reminded me that this was you right the theory that uh you know i don't know if i'm saying it right but right with your head but uh decide with your stomach or something like that? My version of that, it sounds like a version of something I said. If you're trying to write jokes, what I do is I cycle through them as quickly as possible. It's like, what if he says this? No. What if he says this? No. What if he does this? No. And it's the speed that matters. So you don't intellectualize. Is that a good idea or a bad one? You let your stomach do that. So if you're thinking through ideas and you go, no, no, no, no,

that's the one. Yeah. Cause that was, that wasn't an intellectual response. Your body, your body actually just was your sensor. I've paraphrased that wrong a lot of times to people, but you were pretty close, pretty close. But I mean, that works for anything. I mean, you know, the girl version would be like, if you're like thinking about a guy, it's like, what's the one that you got excited about it. You can intellectualize it all day long. Or if you're picking a job, like, you know, a lot of times you kind of,

if you're deciding what restaurant you want to go to, it's like, there's so many things you could do that about you know what i mean where it's like yeah i remember two two cases that were just really stark one was a few relationships ago i was looking for a house with my mate at the time and we looked at a bunch of houses and we all had the same reactions like and we then we pull up to the front of a house that we don't know anything about the inside of the house. And I looked at her and I go, well, there's your house.

And we go in and it kind of didn't matter what it looked like because my decision was made at the curb and I didn't know why, but I was completely aware of it. There was a bathhouse in the shed. There's something in there that I needed. It was a good place to bury the bodies. But I knew that I was going to now go into a process where I would talk myself into how logically.

Yeah, talk yourself into it. Totally made sense. Then that same experience years later, my first marriage, we're looking for an automobile and we're going, you know, car, car, car from one shop to another. And we pulled into this one lot, walked up to a car and I was like, there it is. There it is. Now, was it because it met all of our needs? Was it because it was attractive? No, not really. I just knew it when I saw it because I knew that it would just appeal to us on some stomach level. And it did. And we drove out with that vehicle. And it's like, you still have to use your head, but the last thing, not the last thing, but the, for the Trump thing, one thing I wanted to ask your opinion on, because there was, well, two things. One was his niece's book. I remember my mom, so she's, she read his niece's book. And my instinct originally was like, oh, this stuff's like, anytime like someone can gain a bunch of money. So my mom called me. She's like, I read Trump's niece's book. She's like, turns out this guy was like the worst.

She goes, she read the book. She was all in. She's like, he's mean to people. And he's a, you know, he's a psychopath. He's a narcissist. My mom's like, she just read this a month ago. She's like all in. So what's the deal with the niece's book? Is that complete bullshit?

What if it isn't? What if every word in that was true? Do you care? Right. Well, that was the sort of thing that might've been important before the first term, but I'm a big fan of the fact that people change, first of all. So whoever Trump was 20 years ago is certainly substantially different than he is now. Just like you are. Just like everybody else is. And you're like, in your opinion, he's done good. I think three and a half years, two Nobel Prize nominations could have been four. I mean, it could have been four.

I mean, he could add more. And the economy that, at least for a while, was the envy of the world. I mean, really, I think he has an argument for the best term, one term, of any president. I think he could make that argument. And I'm fairly like agnostic on it. I'm not like coming at it with a specific perspective, but there were a few things. The one thing that I couldn't let go, because I remember even when I was listening to you

and the way that you're talking about Trump, and obviously I've argued with other people where they go, Trump's stupid. I go, yeah, he's stupid. Like, what are you talking about? But like when I read The Art of the Deal, so one of my friends who's like he has a bunch he's like a big real estate very successful right and he was like this book changes life he's

kind of trash so like you know that's a he he was like uh you know like uh grew up in like some trash place and then uh you know became this rich guy so like guys like trump's like his hero you know and he said he has to stop talking about it now because he's in Canada. But right now, I read the deal, and in one of the chapters, he was talking about, he goes, you know, a lot of times these crappy landlords will put homeless people in the places to kick the tenants out as like this shitty technique. And then three chapters later, he goes, but I would never do that. That's not something. and then three chapters later he but he goes what but i would

never do that that's not something and then three chapters later he was talking about how these uh he needed to get these tenants out and he was like so i decided to give the homeless people a place to live i mean hey if i also wanted to help the homeless people but if it did get them out i'm like you just described this three chapters ago that this was like the worst and you said you would never do it and i was like did no one i was like i just felt struck me as like so crazy how could you not like be like hey dude you just said this was like a shitty technique that landlords did and now you're explaining that you're doing it well he he also has been completely transparent on the fact that he'll do whatever works as long as it's legal, basically.

So, yeah, or if, you know, let's just keep it as if it's legal. So that's both his feature and his bug at the same time. You know, the reason that he does things which are continuously impossible, like getting peace deals and beating ISIS quickly. I mean, it's a pretty long list of things, shaking hands with Kim Jong-un and calming that situation down. These are a whole list of impossibles. And it's because he just doesn't see limitations the way other people do. We talk ourselves into lots of limitations. Like, oh, I don't want to be that kind of person. I don't want to be inconsistent with myself. I don't want somebody to feel bad.

I don't want somebody to criticize me. I don't want to later regret that. So we have all these things that stop us from doing, or at least stop us from having all the options. Whereas he walks in and goes, tell me what's legal. Okay, okay, all these things are on the table. If it's legal, tell me what's legal. Okay. Okay. All of these things are on the, on the table. If it's, if it's legal, it's on the table. That's it. That's it. You know, have you taken some of that in your life?

No, I think everybody's sort of has their own, you know, standard. Um, I, I would not do anything just because I could get away with it. I would be a little more, I think I would adhere a little bit, not a little bit, but probably a lot more to the ethical boundaries, just because there's a part of it about who you want to be, because everything you do becomes part of creating who you are. And I'm kind of interested in being the person I want to be, not somebody else. Are you extra sort of sensitive to all the people, all the lies about him and noticed it earlier? One of the,

because you've also seen that in your own life about you too. Like you probably must've had people. I can't, I think you even like, I know you've made up a lot of terms, but what was the one like hoax edits? Is that the term for that? But yeah, hoax edits and context lies and stuff like that.

Yeah, because it's like you've they've had. It's funny, too. I say this happens with conspiracies, too, sometimes when there's ones about you that, you know, aren't true. But it's like, you know, sometimes they'll be like, oh, Trump said this and this. And you're like, but I know you lie. You did it about me, too. So it's kind of a, you know. There's a famous thing about that.

So the physicist Murray Gell-Mann once observed that whenever he read a story about physics, which was his field, he would know that the story was wrong because he knew the field. But as soon as he would turn the page to another topic, let's say the Middle East or whatever, he'd say, well, that's probably right. Yeah. But 100% of the things he knows about are wrong.

Now, if you're famous, you've seen this a million times. Every story I see about myself, yeah, some stuff right and some stuff wrong. Yeah. I can tell, but you can't tell. You don't know what's wrong. can tell but you can't tell you don't know what's wrong uh so years ago before fake news was even the term um it became uh i i got canceled um for saying some things that were taken out of context so i became well forget about what i did say yeah i'll just i'll just skip to the part where people said I said it. Okay. So they said I was a Holocaust denier. No.

No. I've never even met a Holocaust denier. What the hell is a Holocaust denier? There's somebody who actually thinks it didn't happen. So I'm not one of those. Another one was that I was pro-rape. Pro-rape? Yeah. I don't even need to get into what I was talking about. I actually do know that one because that's happened to a couple of

comedians where essentially someone was accused of something and then they like, no, this guy's innocent. And then they say he's pro-rape because they defended the guy's right to a trial or whatever, essentially. Yeah. Mine was different. I was just talking about the fact that if men were not controlled, they would do worse things than if there were laws that constrain them. And that turned into, oh, you think it's natural for men to be rapists and therefore you're in favor of rape because it's natural. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah.

I'm just saying that the society has laws that are a little bit, let's say, more directed at men because they kind of need to be, right? I'm not complaining about it. It's just a fact. And that turned into somehow I'm pro-rape. I'm like, what? That's not even close to what I was saying. But that was before people were so tuned into the fact that the news and social media were routinely made up. Yeah. If those same things happen today, those same accusations, people would laugh at them because they would know, Oh, that's just, obviously those are, those are not true.

People are still making them stick though. You know, it's like, I guess they're a little craftier but i'm watching you know a lot of this stuff still kind of uh stick pretty hard it sticks but if somebody gives you a reasonable explanation why it's not true you're now willing to buy the explanation if they get a chance then i mean you have a following some people are just gone yeah yeah you get hammered one of the ones that i thought like even recently you know that you know how they were gonna teach critical race theory in schools or whatever and all this stuff which kind of goes back to what we're saying it's like they want you know to push their thing on everyone but then i saw like a hundred articles

in post yesterday being like trump says he doesn't want them to teach racism and you're like yeah but that's not what that is it's like a very specific it's just like it's like it's like they they wanted to teach christianity in school and they said no we're not going to do a full course on like how to be a christian and then he goes he says he doesn't want to teach theology it's like you know it's just completely not what's happening. A very specific, like on, you know, anyone that has any intelligence is like, this stuff's a bunch of bullshit. So that can still catch on right now. Yeah. I call those context lies. It's true, but it's taken in a context to make it mean something else. You know,

there were, I think two, two of them about Biden just this week. What are they? They were context lies. One was a video of him appearing to forget the words of the Pledge of Allegiance. But the context was he was just referring to the first part of it as something he wanted to talk about. He wasn't trying to repeat it. So he just trailed off after that. So you see it in a context, it looks like you forgot the words, nothing like that happened. The other one was, I forget the other one, but there was another one that was basically just the same thing. So I'm taking it into context. Oh, the one where the story is that he was reading his answers to interview questions off a teleprompter because he's so brain dead that he can't just answer a question. He has to read the answer from somebody feeding it to him.

But if you see the full context, you can see that he was looking at somebody on a screen who asked him a question while there was also somebody in the room. So he was looking at it and he missed a line from the person on a screen who asked him a question. Yeah. While there was also somebody in the room. So he was looking at it and he missed the line from the person on the screen. So, you know, those are just two complete made up fake stories. Dude, they are 100% the enemy of the people right now. Both sides. I mean, you know, I've argued that the side that's out of power is the biggest liar because they need to be, you know, they need to change something. Whereas the party that's got their president in power, let's say Fox News at the moment, might be more Trump. They have the ability to say, well, he accomplished this thing. He got this Nobel Peace Prize nomination. And just embellish them. So they don't have to lie

as long as he's got some things that are real. So as soon as the parties reverse, Fox News was crazier during the Obama years and it just flipped around. How much pushback did you get being a Hollywood figure when all this stuff was happening with Trump? Did you get any where it was

people legitimately saying, hey, you got to stop this was there any of that or was it more like oh yeah yeah it's pretty vicious the the trouble is that celebrities uh let's say celebrities collectively they're mostly people who are uninformed and don't have a deep talent stack and they're just sort of tourists. I love that idea. That's what I'm going to be saying about every actor right now. Listen, you don't have a deep talent stack. Like you don't get it. You're a tourist. But if I look at somebody like, let's say Alyssa Milano, I would say I disagree with her. One of the great thinkers of our time.

One of the great thinkers of our time. No, I'm going to support her right now. She is a legitimate social force for good, meaning that she has, as far as I can tell, only good intentions. There's nothing about her that suggests bad intentions. She's got skin in the game. She's really deeply into the politics. She's not just passing through and trying to make a name for herself. I have complete respect for that, even if I disagree with her policies and her opinions.

I say, okay, that's a serious citizen who's all in, took the risk. I give her full respect. Let me, let me offer an opposing opinion here because the risk, you know, is aligned with the reward of like anyone who hated Trump in Hollywood and, you know, built a podcast on that and built a career. It's like there was a, you know, if anyone who was kind of in Hollywood not doing so good, it's like they just transitioned into like hating Trump and created this big career. And it's like, Alyssa Milano kind of was, was pushing so much stuff that like ruined people's lives. So I mean,

I guess intention becomes like irrelevant if you know, it kind of is what how much good in are you doing at some point, right? Well, I think intention always matters. You know, I'm not going to treat somebody the same if they have good intentions and something went wrong. I mean, yeah, judge them harshly. Because that's just all of us, right? We're all we're all making mistakes and trying to adjust. And I also would not falter for turning it into a career. Because in a sense, I'm doing the same thing, because you end up burning your bridges. You know, you don't really have an option of going back to your old career once you become political. Yeah, I know. You're right. I'm maybe like, adding too much of that in. But there is some degree. I mean, I don't know, do you think she's made the world a better place

with what she's doing? I'm going to give you the generic answer, which is as long as you've got to, if you have well intentioned people arguing on both sides, that's your best situation. Because you want, let's say, a constructive tension between different opinions. So she's a very good communicator. She's very effective. And I would say she holds up her part of the social contract, which is to argue as hard as she can for something she thinks is genuinely a better way to go. Do you agree that her podcast should be bigger than Joe Rogan's podcast and she's getting shafted by the viewers? I think Joe Rogan's got some trouble right now. Because if you're following that, there's some suggestion that Spotify employees are trying to exert editorial control over his content.

More so than they have. You see the guy that leaked it? There was a guy at Spotify that basically leaked the stuff and being like, yo, it's like full out war. And he basically said it's like an uprising in here and the people at Spotify want to go on strike. It's like a nightmare because it's a New York office. It's like a nightmare. He said it's a whole debacle there right now. But you saw Joe doing his apology for what you thought.

And I thought to myself, I'm not sure that would have happened two months ago, right? Yeah. I could easily say him like just giving a correction and say, oh, correction. Yeah. I said this, but there's not enough evidence of that, blah, blah. I would say, oh, fine, good correction. But the way he seemed to fall on his sword, it just looked like there was some outside force that was distorting

freedom of speech in some way. It felt uncomfortable watching it because I think, again, I can't read his mind, but I felt his discomfort, even if I'm imagining it, because again, I don't know what he's actually thinking. But I worry that his independence is, is at risk. I'm thinking a lot. I mean, there's no $200 million deal that isn't somewhat free, but then again, if you go the other way, the Howard Stern, he took the big $200 million and it made him more free. So, I mean, there's both,

but you're not going to be more free than an independent podcaster that your boss is your RSS feed essentially. like yeah it's it's a thing right yeah i was putting myself in that same situation i was thinking okay would i would i change my content based on and then i thought yeah i wouldn't totally you will it depends on what you're doing like it's i it's not i mean there is some degree with someone like that. He's had a long career. His mark isn't being this edgelord, but there is a degree where he represents free speech

and the top guy that's having who he wants on that isn't owned. So I think he's like a symbol for so many people. Whereas he just started a podcast, and it's the hugest podcast in the world or whatever. But for a lot of people, if he's getting a symbol for so many people. So that it's, whereas he just started a podcast and it's the, you know, he just pockets in the world or whatever, but for a lot of people, like if he's getting censored, like what hope do we have? So I think that's where a lot of this comes from, from people. Yeah. I would say for myself, when I, when I think, think through it as an, okay, if I'm in that situation,

which of course I have been, I have certainly with Dilbert, I have modified my content completely to be compatible with the vehicle. It's in family newspapers, et cetera. And I think to myself, when I'm doing that, I think, okay, am I selling out or am I selling? Because as an artist, you're in business, right? You're selling your content. So what's, where's the dividing line between selling out and just selling? Cause everybody's selling, you're selling your time, you're selling your products. We're all selling. In my opinion, the difference is, it's almost like you can feel like every platform and everything for you, you have non-negotiables. Like for me,

when I'm doing like sketches, for example, I've done tons of times where it's like, we can't swear and stuff like that. And that it's irrelevant to me if on stand up i was told that i can't swear like i don't think i'd want to take that show that show so it's it's almost like on every platform if you add hey we don't want you to touch on these 12 issues you might be like hey that's a little much or i might don't feel like that's compromising the characters too much so so now take it to the next level let's let's say you're joe ro, just to use him as an example. Let's say that he says, you know, I've made enough money. I'm just going to say F the world.

And if Spotify doesn't like what I'm going to say, contract is over. You know, I've got an out clause. Take it or leave it. Maybe he does. Yeah. Here's the problem. He's big enough now that almost certainly there are other people whose incomes depend on his. You know, he's probably got an engineer who's mainly his engineer.

He's got probably some variety of people who depend on him. And my guess is that it's not so easy anymore because his decisions are not just his cost and benefit. Now there are other people's cost and benefit, and he's got to take that into consideration. Dude, I just did an interview with like, um, Roseanne and she, I was on her, I was watching her channel like the minute before. And she did this big video being like, you know, I need to figure out how to make money. Cause you know, you guys might not realize that I have like 80 people I'm supporting. And I was like, Oh, like you kind of never, you never think about that.

You're like, what do they need more money for? And you're like, she's paying for 12 people's mortgages that's why like you kind of never you know realize that you know all the other factors that are involved you know at various times in my career i've thought you know i could just walk away i've made enough money and then i think about how many people make money because of me you know all all the licensing, the publishing it's, it's a big operation because of me, the rubbing tugs, the sex. That's right. What are they going to do? Yeah. Robber of crafts can't do it all. Interesting. Okay. Well, well,

we've been like an hour and a half, so we'll wrap up, but yeah, it would be interesting to see what Joe Rogan. And the last thing is if you are suffering from loser, well, we've been like an hour and a half, so we'll wrap up. But yeah, it would be interesting to see what Joe Rogan. And the last thing is, if you are suffering from loser think, what's the way that people can break out of that? You buy my book, Loser Think, which is a bestseller. And you build your talent stack. So the more experience you have in different things, it's all the talent stack that'll cure you of your loser thing. I really do love that because it does describe a problem that I've been thinking

forever. You're like, you know, there's these people that are fairly smart. They seem so good at this thing. Why are they having so much trouble like, you know, comprehending these like simple concepts and getting down these insane paths. And you're like, it's because they don't have the right talent stack to, is that, yeah, I love it. If you find yourself in a political disagreement with somebody who also has a background in economics, how quickly you end up, you trade, you trace it down to like some assumption that's different. You go, oh, well, I'll check that data because I had a different assumption about it. And that's

it. Like your entire disagreement will start from opposite ends of the world. And if you have the same talent stack, you go, well, how about this? Oh, that. Yeah. And it goes back to your idea when you're, and not going back, but when you're arguing with people and there's, you know, they're kind of like misrepresented, it's kind of like, what do you think that I, you know, what do you think you disagree with that? I think, you know what I mean? Or like, what do you think do I disagree with? And you kind of like ask those questions and force them.

The exact wording of that matters. You say to somebody, you say to somebody, you say to somebody, name something you believe is true that you think I don't think is true. Yes. It's a total conversation stopper on politics because people generally can't. They'll realize that they can't find a difference

even though they've been arguing with you. It's the weirdest thing. Yeah. And it's true though because when you're looking for economics, you're always trying to optimize. And again, I will wrap up. But I was having this conversation the other day

and it was kind of like, it's that idea that there isn't always solutions, there's only trade-offs. And I'm like, they kept being like, what about this? What about this? I go, there's no scenario where there isn't a what about. It's like, there's 300 million people in this country.

Yeah, like all of the options of what to do about all of these different problems have a like, well, what about this guy? And you're like, yeah, you're trying to optimize the best versus the least pain. And then there's, you know, you might factor in like, wow, this is the amount of pain that we're non-negotiable. But it's just trying to put together these equations in your mind. And you're right. People that maybe don't have like knowledge of the multiple things, they aren't able to do that because everything's like binary and linear. Right. Yeah. Okay. Scott Adams, where can people

find you and what time are your periscopes and stuff like that? Well, you can find me on Twitter at Scott Adams says, you can find Dilbert at Dilbert.com and you can find me on Periscope, which is a Twitter app every morning at 10 AM Eastern time. Okay. Google my name. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks a lot for coming on.

Cause I know I've been into you for a long time and I even just, you like sharing the videos and stuff. I was like, Oh, sick. That's very cool. Well, thanks for doing this. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it.