God's Debris: The Complete Works, Amazon https://tinyurl.com/GodsDebrisCompleteWorksFind my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.comContent:Politics, SunRun Solar Battery System, Starbase TX, Grok Maximally Truth Seeking, Civilization Destroying Truth, Grok 3.5 First Principals Reasoning, Warren Buffet Retirement, Halfpinion, HHS Gender Dysphoria Therapy, State Department Quickbooks Embezzler, META AI Lawsuit, Tariff Deals, Elizabeth Warren, James Carville, Jen Psaki, Islamophobia, Ilhan Omar, Islamic Domination System, Pope Trump, Putin's Ceasefire Rejected, Iranian Terrorists, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
Chapter 1: What is the highlight of Human Civilization?
Let's see if our comments are working. And then we've got a show for you. It'll be amazing. First one to make a Star Wars pun gets one demerit. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of Human Civilization, Sunday edition.
If you'd like to take your experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, well, all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or Chelsea Stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it's going to happen right now. Right now. EJ says, Scott, you're a dishonest man. I'll drink to that. I like to see the comments from the terrible people. Let me just insult your character, and we'll start from there. All right.
Well, I've got a movie recommendation for you. So the other day I watched the new year 2025 Captain America. Now, if you haven't seen it... Captain America is black this time, but he's not the only Captain America, because I guess the idea is there's more than one Captain America, and there was an original one, and then there were a few others, and then there's the 2025 version.
But the new one is black, and the original one is also black. So there were two Captain Americas in this movie, and they both starred. and they were both black Captain Americans. But the news is that Disney wanted more from Marvel, but now it wants less. I guess the people are getting tired of the superhero genre, but maybe they're getting tired of just remaking everything to be woke. Maybe.
I don't know. It was an okay movie. It wasn't really any better or any worse than the other ones. which are all kind of boring at this point. I don't think any of the superhero movies are worth watching. So we'll see. Australia is launching the world's largest battery-powered ship. It can carry up to 2,100 passengers and 225 vehicles, and it's entirely battery-powered.
Now, of course, you're going to ask, what happens if there's a battery fire? Do you jump into water with the sharks, or do you let it burn you up? I don't know. I don't know. I'm just telling you that there's the world's biggest battery-powered, I think it's some kind of a shuttle. And it's 426 feet long. It's a big-ass boat. Here's another story that I like a lot, if I understand it.
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Chapter 2: How does the SunRun Solar Battery System work?
So in California... probably other places too. There are companies like Tesla that will sell you a battery for your home. So you might have solar panels and then you charge up your own home battery. So you've got some backup power. But another company that does that is Sunrun and their CalReady system. And apparently what they've done is they've networked together 56 companies
thousand homes that have their batteries and If you have enough solar panels on enough houses and they each have their own batteries Apparently you can turn it into Essentially its own its own power system So even though that's fifty six thousand homes that are connected it would power two hundred and eighty thousand homes and which would be the equivalent of all of Ventura County.
Now, if I'm understanding this correctly, this would be one of the greatest energy accomplishments of all time. Because if you just have your own solar panels and your own battery, it's kind of good. But if things go bad, you might not have enough battery personally. But apparently, if you've got all of these batteries connected, you don't have to worry too much about ever running out of energy.
So that's pretty impressive. And then the people who become part of the network get paid. So they get paid for being part of the network, and they get pretty good power. Allegedly, Hyundai, the automaker, they've got a plant in Georgia And they're going to use Atlas robots to automate their plant. So do you believe that? I feel like all the robot stories are a little premature.
They might be testing it. But they aim to manufacture 100,000 electric and hybrid vehicles annually. but they're going to use the bipedal robots, bipedal. In other words, the two-legged robots developed by Boston Dynamics. And they're going to do a whole bunch of different tasks that are part of assembling that car.
And the idea is that the robots will automate up to 40% of the vehicle assembly by the end of this year. Does that sound even remotely possible to you? that by the end of this year, there will be an operational car-making plant in Georgia where 40% of the effort will be done by robots, two-legged robots. That seems a little bit optimistic, but we'll see.
You probably know that Elon Musk was starting his own city I guess in Texas, near where he was doing his SpaceX stuff. And now it's official. It's called Starbase Texas. And I guess it's officially blessed by the state. So you can add to Elon Musk's accomplishments that he built a city. That wasn't even like a major project. So... Do you have any minor projects? Well, I built a city.
I would love to know if this city has any special engineering features that make it extra good to live in it. But maybe we'll learn about that later. I saw an interview with Lara Trump and Elon Musk in which Musk was saying what he often says. that Grok, the AI, should be maximally truth-seeking. What do you think of that? Do you think AI should be maximally truth-seeking?
Well, maybe not maximally, because I think that the truth would destroy civilization. How many of you believe that's true? Because I'm not even going to give you examples of where I think it would destroy civilization. Because if I gave you an example, I would get double canceled. So I can't even give you an example.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Grok AI 3.5?
I may have told you this before, that I think it was 25 years ago, I put a good chunk of what little money I had at the time into Berkshire Hathaway. And sure enough, You know, just like you'd expect, it did great. I think it might have doubled during the time that I held it. And so I said to myself, you know that Warren Buffett's looking pretty old.
I think he's going to retire or maybe just die of natural causes. And I don't want to be sitting on this Berkshire Hathaway stock when he goes. If I had simply held that stock, oh my God. I don't know what percentage it went up in the last 25 years, but it was pretty good. Pretty good. So don't take my advice for investing, that's for sure. Well, Warren Buffett also has a half opinion.
You've heard me say that before. A half opinion is when you ignore either the costs or the benefits of a situation and you just act like only one of them exists. Oh, it's just a cost. Don't do it. Or it's just a benefit. You should totally do it. Now, in the real world, things have costs and benefits. And one of the words that signals that you have a half pinion is the word should.
Should is usually a signal that you've got a half pinion coming. So listen to this. This is what Warren Buffett said about tariffs. Quote, trade should not be a weapon. Trade should not be a weapon. So is he in favor of using tariffs? tariffs as a negotiating tool? Does he think that we should simply accept the tariffs that other countries put on us so that we don't start any trade wars?
That is what you call a half-pinion. He gets to say the part that makes him look good without having to commit to anything. Should. So let me give you another example. I'm going to give you my opinion about war. Are you ready? This will be my official public opinion about war. We should fight wars without killing any civilians. Who's with me? Anybody want to sign on to my half an opinion?
Because in the real world, you don't get that option. So you just say, well, we should. And what about using trade as a weapon? Well, we should not. As soon as you see the word should, there's some bullshit happening. So that's your persuasion lesson of the day. Always look for should. And when I use the word myself, which I do, It's just too easy to grab that word when you're talking.
I try to correct myself because, you know, you can easily just fall into this should thing, and it always means you're not looking at the whole picture. It's almost a confession. All right. The Postmillennial has a story about RFK Jr. 's Department of Health and Human Services. They've decided that the recommended treatment for people with gender dysphoria is the therapy as opposed to
gender-affirming surgery, for example, and points out that the more invasive stuff is not proven to be effective, sort of in general. And so this is basically a review. It's not a law. So the review that HHS did stated that the effectiveness of psychotherapy for other mental health issues
including those present alongside gender dysphoria, quote, suggests it may also be beneficial for gender dysphoria specifically. Is it true that psychotherapy is effective for other disorders? That's actually a real question. I don't know the answer to that because I have heard a lot of people say that it's just fake, that therapy doesn't work for anybody really.
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Chapter 4: What is Warren Buffett's retirement plan?
um which i always think is weird how many of you would say of yourselves that you've not really had any mental problems that required any help how many of you would say that because i feel like i'm unusual Like, I don't have anxiety. I don't have depression. I don't have self-doubt. I don't have any of that. And I'm not sure why. I don't think I was born with better genes or anything like that.
I have no idea why. I just don't have them. So a number of you are in good shape, too. Oh, good. According to the New York Post, There's a former State Department analyst who wrote checks to herself during her job for $650,000 over two years. Now, the fun part of this is the trick she used for embezzling. So apparently she was using, what do you call it, QuickBooks.
So she had access to QuickBooks, and then she would go in QuickBooks, and I guess nobody was checking her work, and she would write a check to herself and then print it. But here's what she cleverly did. Then she would go back into QuickBooks after she had printed the check,
and changed the name that was in QuickBooks from her own name, which is what she had just printed out, to some name that sounded like a vendor. And she got away with that for two years and got $650,000 out of the government. Now, the question I ask you is, how much of that is happening?
You know, I go back to my observation that if you just drive around in a nice neighborhood, you can't really understand how so many people got so much money. Or back in the times when I would go on vacations in nice places, and I would think to myself, you know, I'm the Dilber guy. I got super lucky, made more money than most people, so I get to go to this resort, some five-store resort somewhere.
But then it would be full. And I would think to myself, how could it be so many people who were so lucky? Did they inherit it? Are they criminals?
And I don't know what the percentage is, but I just think that there's some shocking number of people who are rich who literally stole it from the government because the government has so much money that you can steal a lot for yourself and nobody notices. So, I mean, it's just speculation, but I got a feeling that not everybody's earning their money the hard way like I did.
Well, there's a big trial going on with Meta's AI. There's some authors, mostly authors, who are trying to say that the AI, in this case Meta, used their copyrighted work, and they believe that their copyrighted should protect them from having the AI suck it up and be able to do stuff with it.
Now, the good news is I was just reading a little bit about the questions that were being asked by the judge. And, you know, it's hard to know for sure from a distance, but the judge seems to be really, really sharp because I looked at the questions and how he framed stuff, and I thought, wow, you really kind of get this topic. So Ars Technica is writing about this.
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Chapter 5: What is the controversy around gender dysphoria therapy?
Unfortunately, as someone who has written books, I think it's going to be the author world that dies because that seems like the older technology, the one that doesn't really, it's not really supporting the country directly. It's just something people like, whereas AI is more existential, necessary for defense, for economics, for everything.
So I did a little test where I went to Grok, and I told it to summarize the book Atomic Habits, and it didn't pause for a second, and it gave me a good little summary where I would say to myself, huh, I don't know if I need to read this book now. And I thought to myself, is that only true for nonfiction books? Can I just go to... And I've tried to do it with my own books.
But when I do it with my own books, it tells me that it can only tell me what other people have said about it. So if there are other people who have written long reviews or if somebody went on X and did a big thread where they said, here's the best ideas from his book, I guess it could trade on that. And so I don't know if I would write another book.
Because we're at that point where you don't really need to buy a book if you have AI. You can just tell it to summarize all the top 10 business books. And by the time you've reached your destination on your airline trip, you'll basically know what's in 10 different important books. I don't know. And then what about the ones that are just pure fiction?
Do you think that AI will just be able to look at a bunch of fiction that other people have written and just say, all right, I can see how this works. I see the patterns. You made a prediction. If I write another one, it'll be my best. Well, even if it is my best, it wouldn't be economic at this point. I don't know. So this is a big case. We'll see how that goes.
According to just the news, there's a rumor that the first big trade deal might be with India. Now, we don't have confirmation of that, but Commerce Secretary Ludnick, he hinted at the fact that there's going to be an announcement coming, and it wasn't long ago that J.D. Vance was over in India meeting with Modi, and so if you just sort of
You read the tea leaves and you figure India might want to be first. Maybe it'll be India. But here's the political element. So the Democrats have gone all in. on the tariffs being the worst idea and nothing but chaos can come from it. Now, would you agree that they're all in on that?
They bet their entire farm on tariffs or destroying the economy so that by the midterms they can say, see, look what he did. He destroyed the economy. Now, they're not getting what they want in terms of the stock market, which is largely recovered, or the price of eggs, which have gone down, or the price of fuel, which I think has drifted down a little bit.
So they're really going to have to bank on the tariffs being a disaster. So what happens when the tariff deals start coming through? Because you know they will. there's not really much chance that we won't make any tariff deals. And we'll obviously do the important ones that we think we can get done and make a difference first.
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Chapter 6: How does AI challenge traditional content creation?
So that's my lead into my next story, which is James Carville has the most insane claim here. He was talking to Ryan Lizza on a podcast. And according to Carville, he said, quote, people say to me all the time, James, why don't we just do like the Republicans do? Just stand up and lie. Why?
All right, so this is Carville claiming that the Republicans lie, and then he's going to tell you why they can't do that. And he says, because our effing people wouldn't stand for it, Carville says. If I stood up and lied, you would be the first person to say, James Carville lost all credibility last night when he said X, Y, and Z. Really? Really?
Has James Carville never noticed that Democrats lie? I mean, I don't even know what to say about that because I can't tell if he's actually stupid and clueless and he doesn't know or is that just one of his lies and he's just, you know, sort of a happy warrior, lies about anything. But But Carville is not one of the designated liars.
He does try to weasel his way around to something that's closer to spinning or omitting some facts or leaving out some context or something. So he's not, I wouldn't call him one of the designated liars. He doesn't like to get caught in a really, really direct lie. But he certainly said some things about Republicans getting ready to
to cut Medicaid and Social Security, to which I say, but the president says he won't do that, and there's no support for that. And then he would argue, well, but, you know, there are reasons to think they might do it anyway. So that's not the worst lie. It just, you know, lacks context, I guess you'd say. All right, but at the same time,
Jen Psaki, Democrat, she was asked about the so-called cover-up of Biden's mental decline, and she was on some podcast, and she argued that she doesn't like the word cover-up because that suggests that they were aware of the fact that Biden was mentally incapable and they were hiding it from people. And she doesn't believe that she ever saw Biden with any mental decline.
Now, is she a Democrat who is lying? You can't really tell because, you know, maybe. Maybe by weird coincidence, she just never saw it because he had good days and bad days. So it's wildly improbable that she was not aware about his mental decline. Wildly improbable. But you can't say it's impossible. So again, she's not one of the Democrat-designated liars.
She's more of a spinner, more of a leave out some context, allow you to believe something that you shouldn't believe. But anyway, I guess the Democrats think they don't lie. So Ilhan Omar was asked about on some interview
the rise of Islamophobia and she was asked if that's a legitimate fear that people are afraid about the rise of Islam of Islam I guess the United States I would say that I'm afraid of that because the Islamic system is such that it's it's built to dominate
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