2021-10-16_DELETED_EPISODE_Ivermectin_Controversy_with

00:00:00.000 | On today's podcast episode/audio file I'm going to do something that I can't ever remember

00:00:07.000 | doing before.

00:00:08.000 | I'm going to release one of my deleted episodes.

00:00:14.760 | I'm going to record an introduction here and then I'm going to append to this introduction

00:00:19.340 | a full podcast episode which was and is one of my deleted podcast episodes.

00:00:28.000 | Does it all make sense in just a moment?

00:00:30.960 | Frequently, very frequently I would estimate that probably I create, I record probably

00:00:36.480 | 20 to 40% more podcast episodes than you ever hear.

00:00:41.640 | I will frequently sit down, I'll record a podcast episode, I'll record something on

00:00:45.920 | a topic and I will much of the time get 30 or 45 minutes into it and then I'll just stop.

00:00:53.960 | Frequently I'll record a whole episode and then just sit on it for a day or two thinking

00:00:57.320 | about it and then decide, "You know what, that's not something that I'm going to release

00:01:01.100 | to the show."

00:01:03.760 | Sometimes I'll be able to go back and I'll rework it a few times and I'll release the

00:01:07.280 | third or fourth version of it where I was able to communicate more clearly.

00:01:11.360 | Sometimes I just simply never release an episode.

00:01:14.480 | I think that's normal for most artists.

00:01:17.120 | I've met novelists, most of whom have some story sketched outlines of books they may

00:01:22.640 | never write but they sketched out some basic plot ideas or they have an unfinished manuscript

00:01:28.720 | or artists who have ideas that they've maybe sketched out on paper but they haven't actually

00:01:34.360 | followed through with the full work.

00:01:36.240 | I don't expect it to be anything different.

00:01:38.520 | I consider it a great privilege for you to be listening to me and I want to deliver my

00:01:43.280 | very best content.

00:01:45.040 | If I had to be live on the radio every single day, then I would simply go live on the radio

00:01:50.560 | and do the very best I can in that format.

00:01:52.840 | But with a podcast, I have the opportunity for some introspection, some more careful

00:01:58.720 | conversations.

00:01:59.720 | I have the opportunity to try again if I don't quite get it right.

00:02:02.800 | And so I will frequently create an episode and then just simply pause or try a few times.

00:02:09.240 | Usually the reasons for this is that number one, I am often not as focused as I want to

00:02:17.200 | be.

00:02:18.200 | I'm very sensitive to try to stay very focused on the topic and sometimes I go down a few

00:02:23.600 | too many rabbit trails, tell a few too many stories, make a few too many illusions, introduce

00:02:29.520 | a few too many clauses like I'm doing right now and I think, "No, I should have been more

00:02:34.680 | direct, clearer, more succinct with what I want to say."

00:02:39.040 | And so I'll go back and I'll cut out some of the filler fluff and I will then release

00:02:43.000 | it that way.

00:02:44.000 | And I find it easier.

00:02:45.000 | I don't edit post-recording, but I do edit pre-recording.

00:02:48.880 | I try to create a clear outline of what I want to say and then simply say it.

00:02:55.120 | Another reason though is I'll touch on topics that are difficult, topics that are controversial,

00:03:00.480 | topics that are charged with emotional energy.

00:03:06.000 | And sometimes when I'm talking about those topics, I'll be working my way through them

00:03:09.200 | and then I'll just simply get to the end of the show and I'll say, "I don't want to deal

00:03:12.720 | with the controversy that's going to be created by this.

00:03:15.560 | I don't want to deal with the feedback."

00:03:18.320 | And when I deal with those subjects, I try to deal with them in a fairly thorough manner,

00:03:22.800 | doing my best to anticipate the rebuttals or objections that I'm likely to receive because

00:03:27.800 | I want to answer those things up front so that my audience can understand the likely

00:03:33.480 | objections and rebuttals.

00:03:34.720 | But sometimes I don't feel like I do a good enough job with that.

00:03:37.000 | And so the audio file that I deleted that I'm going to append to what you're listening

00:03:40.780 | to now is one of those.

00:03:43.680 | And it's a podcast that I created in response to a little bit of recent controversy that

00:03:49.960 | I unintentionally wandered into.

00:03:53.120 | Specifically, I said in passing on a previous episode, I said that some people are taking

00:04:02.260 | a drug usually known as an anti-parasite drug called ivermectin prophylactically as a potential

00:04:11.340 | preventive medicine or as a treatment for symptoms related to a COVID-19 infection.

00:04:19.240 | That was the comment that I made in passing.

00:04:21.600 | And it slipped out because it is true.

00:04:24.720 | It is an accurate truth.

00:04:27.600 | And then after the podcast went live, I started to receive feedback from people.

00:04:34.980 | And this is, by the way, quite the controversial subject.

00:04:37.920 | It's not a small unknown subject.

00:04:40.560 | And I didn't really intend to wander into it because I consider conversations like that

00:04:44.220 | to be outside of the scope of radical personal finance.

00:04:46.880 | I'm trying to stay focused on finance.

00:04:49.560 | And the episode itself was somewhat ancillary.

00:04:52.480 | I'm talking about the pandemic related to the economy.

00:04:54.640 | I'm talking about freedom, etc.

00:04:56.200 | The question is, does this really relate to personal finance?

00:04:58.600 | And that was one where I think it relates, but I believe I owe it to my audience because

00:05:03.440 | this is the big thing that's affecting all of our lives.

00:05:05.600 | It's affecting where I live, where you go on vacation, our money, stock market, all

00:05:09.640 | this stuff.

00:05:10.680 | It's affecting it.

00:05:11.680 | And so I thought, I'll go ahead and release it.

00:05:13.280 | And I didn't want to get mired down into a controversy on medical stuff that I'm simply

00:05:17.280 | not qualified to address.

00:05:18.400 | I don't have the interest in talking through publicly.

00:05:23.120 | So after the feedback came in from audience, some of it public, I received responses on

00:05:27.600 | Twitter, I received responses privately, several responses.

00:05:32.680 | And I thought, you know what, usually my experience is when someone takes the time to sit down

00:05:35.660 | and comment on something, there's usually at least 10 times as many people who are thinking

00:05:39.700 | about it.

00:05:40.700 | And I'll often address, if I get enough comments, I'll often address a controversy or correct

00:05:43.960 | something that I've misstated in a show, something like that.

00:05:48.920 | And so this was one of those.

00:05:50.260 | But after the fact, I just said, you know what, I don't want to get involved in this

00:05:53.520 | controversy and so I deleted it.

00:05:55.720 | Well over the past few days, the controversy continued.

00:05:58.680 | People talking about it, people commenting on it, etc.

00:06:01.440 | And so I released this audio file in a conversation in the Radical Personal Finance Community

00:06:06.800 | Facebook group, which of course, if you're on Facebook, you should join.

00:06:10.080 | Go to Facebook.com, search Radical Personal Finance Community Facebook group and you'll

00:06:13.160 | find us.

00:06:14.160 | Just search Radical Personal Finance and you'll find it there.

00:06:16.720 | And several listeners said, "Hey Joshua, this is actually really great.

00:06:18.960 | I really enjoyed this.

00:06:19.960 | This was an excellent episode and I think you should have released it."

00:06:23.760 | So after considering it for a couple of days, I've decided to do that.

00:06:26.160 | But I want to give you this preamble and I want to comment on a couple of issues in addition

00:06:31.280 | to what I said in that particular podcast episode.

00:06:37.080 | So in essence, I am addressing the Ivermectin controversy in that I mentioned, but I'm trying

00:06:46.740 | to tie it in this podcast episode.

00:06:48.280 | I'm trying to tie it to finance.

00:06:50.240 | And much of the show is talking about the nature of expertise and the nature of managing

00:06:57.720 | information as a non-expert.

00:07:00.480 | And I present to you some mental models that I use to manage information as a non-expert

00:07:08.680 | and how I'm trying to play both sides to acknowledge my lack of expertise, but also play both sides.

00:07:15.640 | You'll hear me talk about that in the audio file to come.

00:07:20.680 | And I believe that this is very useful, right?

00:07:22.260 | Because we're living in the information age and our skills of managing that information

00:07:25.560 | are important, especially in a world where the information is coming faster than ever

00:07:29.880 | before.

00:07:31.160 | But I had to talk extensively about the Ivermectin controversy so you understood the backstory

00:07:35.240 | of that particular topic.

00:07:40.000 | Why is this important to me?

00:07:41.000 | Why am I talking about it?

00:07:42.120 | Well, right now we are suffering through, or I guess I should simply say we are living

00:07:48.120 | through a time in which expertise is being tested.

00:07:54.680 | We see this all over the place.

00:07:58.040 | And I'm personally very sensitive to this question because of my own expertise in a

00:08:03.400 | very narrow field.

00:08:07.160 | We could divide on this topic many people into two camps.

00:08:09.840 | There are those who simply have as a personal philosophy, trust the experts.

00:08:15.080 | Be confident in what the experts have to say, trust the experts.

00:08:18.320 | And if you ask them for their opinion on a subject, their opinions will largely reflect

00:08:24.200 | the consensus of the expert class to which they have been exposed.

00:08:29.800 | On the other hand, there are those who see themselves as contrarians.

00:08:33.360 | There are those who see themselves as those who don't trust the experts, who believe that

00:08:37.520 | the experts are unreliable, untrustworthy, perhaps malintentioned, part of a greater

00:08:44.360 | conspiracy.

00:08:45.360 | And so their automatic gut reaction is to not trust the experts and rather to trust

00:08:50.520 | anybody who says anything against the experts.

00:08:53.300 | And both sides of these, as I see it, both of these positions are very flawed because

00:08:59.340 | you're easily manipulated by others who wish to manipulate you.

00:09:04.240 | On the one hand, you're easily manipulated by somebody who comes with the veneer of expertise,

00:09:11.160 | somebody who puts on a white lab coat or somebody who looks intelligent or has all the right

00:09:15.760 | credentials.

00:09:16.760 | That person can manipulate you using an appeal to authority and demonstrate by virtue of

00:09:23.480 | their expertise that you should believe them and then you do what they say without actually

00:09:28.640 | having seen the fact that that expertise is actually true.

00:09:32.600 | But then the other side is also quite dangerous, that you can be manipulated by those who prey

00:09:37.840 | upon your distrust of experts, who prey upon your distrust of the consensus opinion.

00:09:44.480 | And it's quite scary to see how easily people can be manipulated when they adopt a contrarian

00:09:49.400 | viewpoint.

00:09:50.400 | And so what happens is they don't necessarily walk away from all leadership.

00:09:53.920 | Rather they walk away from the official leaders and they become easily swayed prey for those

00:10:00.040 | who designate themselves the contrarian unofficial leaders.

00:10:04.160 | And both of these I see are dangerous.

00:10:06.880 | And I'm personally very sensitive to this because of my expertise in the financial space,

00:10:11.080 | but I've been on all sides of that.

00:10:12.520 | Let me share my story.

00:10:14.940 | When I was younger, I was conditioned by the mainstream information on finance.

00:10:22.480 | I got my start in personal finance going to Barnes and Noble and the library getting books.

00:10:27.600 | And by the time somebody has gotten through the filters of a book publisher and or gotten

00:10:32.760 | onto the shelves of Barnes and Noble and the library, most of the time that person is an

00:10:37.240 | expert reflecting consensus opinion.

00:10:40.000 | So I got my start in mainstream finance and this awakened an interest in me in finance

00:10:44.720 | specifically.

00:10:45.860 | But then by nature, I'm the kind of person who's often attracted to the contrarian viewpoint.

00:10:52.000 | And so I found the contrarians and I was really persuaded of those contrarians, the people

00:10:57.040 | who had that personality of it's us against the man and I've got the better solution.

00:11:01.560 | And I started to consume their work and this started to create in me perspectives and opinions

00:11:05.400 | that were by nature contrarian.

00:11:08.220 | And so very quickly, my personal finance trust went very low and I distrusted the expert

00:11:14.240 | class in the world of personal finance.

00:11:17.320 | You've heard me say, I thought brokers are out to make you broker.

00:11:19.800 | I can do better on my own.

00:11:20.800 | I can invest better on my own.

00:11:22.080 | I'm a contrarian.

00:11:23.080 | I saw myself in that light.

00:11:25.080 | Then through a series of circumstances, I joined the expert class.

00:11:28.480 | I went through the traditional model.

00:11:30.400 | I went through the traditional career pathway.

00:11:32.480 | I went through the traditional training and I learned the intelligence behind the expert

00:11:37.960 | class.

00:11:39.480 | And then when I was a part of the expert class, I kind of laughed at some of the ignorance

00:11:46.340 | that I would see revealed in the contrarians perspectives and the contrarians opinions.

00:11:51.340 | And I thought of myself as smarter than other people because I knew something.

00:11:56.040 | But what I also then was exposed to is the fact that the expert class is not morally

00:12:00.800 | pure.

00:12:02.360 | A lot of times, many of the contrarians, even if they weren't exactly right in the specific

00:12:07.720 | thing they were putting their finger on, they were often directionally right.

00:12:11.980 | But we as the expert class would lock our shields together, join ranks and create a

00:12:18.520 | cartel trying to shun the non-expert class while knowing that we had a little bit of

00:12:24.720 | rot in our midst.

00:12:27.020 | And I always wanted kind of a morally pure perspective.

00:12:30.720 | I wanted to have this sense of certainty that, "Hey, I'm on the right team and my opinions

00:12:34.880 | are the right ones."

00:12:35.880 | I've always craved that in many regards.

00:12:38.520 | And so when I left the expert class and became part of the independent media space here on

00:12:43.900 | radical personal finance, it was a great relief.

00:12:46.520 | But then what was so remarkable to me was watching how it took me years to systematically

00:12:51.440 | identify and then undo the conditioning that I had experienced by being part of the expert

00:12:56.840 | class.

00:12:57.840 | Still, to this day, if someone says, "I'm going to fire my..."

00:13:00.240 | If someone says a negative comment about financial advisors, generally, I have this thing rise

00:13:05.440 | up in my heart where I'm like, "Wait a second.

00:13:07.360 | Hold on.

00:13:08.360 | Hold on.

00:13:09.360 | I've been a financial advisor.

00:13:10.360 | Don't criticize us.

00:13:11.360 | We're not worthy of the criticism."

00:13:12.360 | And yet, in many cases, we are worthy of the criticism.

00:13:15.000 | And so over the years as I've dealt with these things, I have noticed the parallels between

00:13:21.560 | my expert class and the expert classes of others, including the expert classes of people

00:13:27.680 | like medical professionals or other skilled industries where there is a knowledge component

00:13:33.900 | to the work.

00:13:34.900 | And I've realized that the truth is different in different contexts.

00:13:41.260 | It's not necessarily in the middle.

00:13:43.000 | Sometimes the middle seems appealing because you're trying to balance both sides, but the

00:13:46.720 | middle is not in and of itself true.

00:13:49.240 | You got to find the truth, but it's different in different expressions and often takes time

00:13:53.560 | for that truth to emerge.

00:13:55.480 | And so what can happen is the consensus can change over time.

00:13:59.920 | And in the fullness of time, I believe that we're coming more and more towards things

00:14:03.680 | that are true, but that in-between ground is often difficult to see and it's difficult

00:14:08.120 | to navigate.

00:14:09.600 | And so in this audio file, I was trying to articulate some of the models that I've developed

00:14:15.160 | to try to deal with that, especially in areas where I am not an expert, such as the medical

00:14:21.840 | field.

00:14:23.360 | I'm an interested layman, but I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm not competent enough

00:14:28.200 | to discuss these things in the way that a trained medical professional does.

00:14:33.800 | But I'm also acutely aware and sensitive to how the contrarian perspective has a lot of

00:14:39.840 | strength to it.

00:14:41.240 | And it annoys me when medical professionals don't do a better job listening, just like

00:14:45.360 | financial advisors don't do a better job listening when they should.

00:14:49.920 | And so that was what I was trying to target.

00:14:51.480 | Now, ultimately I deleted it because I felt this is too ancillary to the topic of personal

00:14:55.360 | finance, but you be the judge of that.

00:14:59.080 | You're still listening.

00:15:00.080 | Obviously you're interested and you always have the right of veto by simply hitting pause

00:15:05.920 | or moving on with your time.

00:15:07.280 | That's your right as a human being.

00:15:09.000 | So I'm releasing this.

00:15:11.120 | But I want to make one other point before I include the podcast episode.

00:15:15.880 | Actually two other points.

00:15:17.360 | On the topic of coercion, I don't think that I have been particularly radical in my opinions

00:15:24.240 | on the coronavirus pandemic.

00:15:27.360 | I was among those who were warning quite early because I have always been sensitive to the

00:15:32.960 | global disastrous possibilities created by a viral pandemic.

00:15:39.800 | And being a long-time prepper, I have focused on this as being a major risk.

00:15:45.100 | And so I was more sensitive than most to the risks.

00:15:49.260 | And I believe that caution was warranted and is warranted along the way.

00:15:55.080 | It's hard for me to see how caution is not warranted when you're dealing with people's

00:15:59.040 | lives.

00:16:00.040 | And I've had one, two, three friends personally die from COVID.

00:16:07.400 | And so it sobers you when you deal with that and you recognize, hey, this is an important

00:16:14.120 | factor.

00:16:15.120 | I've not been a radical kind of anti-protester, but I am finding myself increasingly radicalized

00:16:24.600 | over the past weeks and months.

00:16:26.440 | And the reason for that has to do with coercion, which is what I was talking about in the original

00:16:30.880 | podcast where I mentioned passing ivermectin.

00:16:32.840 | I was talking about coercion.

00:16:35.360 | And I am very concerned any time coercion comes into play because I believe that coercing

00:16:41.560 | people into doing something is very rarely the right solution.

00:16:46.800 | I'm not 100% opposed to coercion.

00:16:49.280 | I believe there is a time and a place for coercion.

00:16:52.640 | But it's very rarely the right solution.

00:16:56.640 | And even if it is the right solution, coercion is usually an indication that something else

00:17:03.200 | is very wrong.

00:17:04.840 | Something else is very much out of line.

00:17:07.680 | I always think of my children because they're the ones over whom I have coercive power.

00:17:13.600 | When I coerce my child into doing something, let's say that I see my child out in the middle

00:17:18.360 | of a street and I look down the road and there's a car.

00:17:21.120 | I am going to coerce my child off that street.

00:17:23.940 | I will run over, I will pick up my child, and I will physically force him out of the

00:17:28.760 | street because the consequences of my not doing so are so extreme.

00:17:33.680 | But that in and of itself, the fact that I have to do that is a sign of my lack of proper

00:17:41.680 | forethought, lack of proper planning and preparation as a parent.

00:17:47.000 | The fact that I have to resort to coercion is a very large negative mark against my parenting.

00:17:52.840 | What I should have done is I should have known that these streets are dangerous for children.

00:17:58.320 | I should have in the first place been thoughtful about where my child is physically located.

00:18:03.440 | I should have been thoughtful about making sure that my child is properly supervised.

00:18:07.480 | I should have been thoughtful and I should have worked ahead to make sure that my child

00:18:11.520 | is trained to look both ways before crossing the street.

00:18:14.920 | I should have been thoughtful and made sure that my child is trained from a very early

00:18:18.200 | age to stay back from the street, that he's not allowed to run after his ball in the street.

00:18:23.120 | If his ball goes in the street, he must come and get me because he doesn't know the danger.

00:18:27.280 | I should have been thoughtful in making sure that my child, if incapable of doing this

00:18:31.160 | safely, was locked inside the house and that the locks were of such a type and height that

00:18:36.160 | my child can't manipulate.

00:18:37.600 | I should have been thoughtful and made sure there was a physical barrier preventing him

00:18:40.880 | from going into the street.

00:18:42.420 | At every stage, the fact that my child is in the street is an indictment of my previous

00:18:47.760 | forethought and my skills as a parent.

00:18:50.520 | And so while coercion is necessary and proper in that circumstance, it is an indictment

00:18:57.600 | of my improper prior planning and preparation for that moment.

00:19:02.800 | It should never have reached that point.

00:19:06.080 | Now obviously that's an obvious example, but there are many things in life that are not

00:19:08.880 | so clear.

00:19:09.880 | And so you say, "Is coercion warranted in other things?"

00:19:13.320 | And again, I'm not 100% opposed to coercion, but I take coercion as a major warning sign

00:19:19.400 | that I am failing somewhere.

00:19:21.360 | If I have to force my child to do his or her schoolwork, if I have to force him to do something,

00:19:27.600 | then that's an indication that I am failing somewhere because coercion is not a reliable

00:19:33.400 | tool.

00:19:34.400 | Now that's when dealing with a child.

00:19:35.500 | What about with an adult?

00:19:37.100 | What if I'm dealing with another sentient human being, a rational, sane person, a person

00:19:42.900 | who is not clinically insane, and I am forcing coercion?

00:19:48.560 | When should coercion be employed?

00:19:51.080 | The times when coercion, force, violence should be employed are very rare, and they involve

00:19:59.500 | the threats to life of another person, threats to health and to life, which is, I think,

00:20:06.720 | the best argument that people have to coerce things like vaccination.

00:20:10.920 | The problem is that when you look throughout history and you study the history of coercion,

00:20:15.280 | it is far easier to find abundant examples of when people have used coercion, believing

00:20:22.680 | themselves to be on, as we would say in today's world, the right side of history, and yet

00:20:28.000 | when history looks back and judges with an unemotional frame, you see that that coercion

00:20:34.600 | was either not warranted at all, led to very poor results, or created a very slippery slope

00:20:43.680 | that then went into something else that was far more destructive.

00:20:48.180 | And so anytime coercion against another human being is used, it should be the kind of thing

00:20:53.460 | that sends up major red flags.

00:20:56.260 | The clacks and bells in your heart should be ringing, saying, "Warning, warning, something

00:21:02.000 | is seriously wrong here.

00:21:04.080 | Is this the kind of thing that I need to use this very, very, very valuable tool for because

00:21:11.560 | this tool is very destructive?

00:21:14.120 | Is this the right time, the right place, and the right tool for this thing?"

00:21:18.760 | Now we can debate that, but when I see coercion massively increasing on this particular topic

00:21:26.360 | of forced vaccinations, then it makes me very suspicious that something is deeply wrong.

00:21:35.720 | And while I'm not going to be the one who wades in ignorantly and says, "Well, this

00:21:42.760 | is this, this," I'm going to be very, very cautious, which was why I was originally talking

00:21:47.640 | about it, is freedom.

00:21:48.640 | And I said, "I don't think it's the end of the world.

00:21:51.360 | I think we're okay.

00:21:52.400 | I think this is going to pass through.

00:21:54.480 | To me, a lot of the stuff makes sense."

00:21:55.920 | And that was, we should be very careful of coercion.

00:21:58.960 | And the more I see coercion used without very strong justification, the more that I get

00:22:07.400 | very, very nervous because we can see historically that that is a very difficult thing.

00:22:14.320 | But this relationship, right, acknowledging expertise, being thoughtful and careful, it's

00:22:19.040 | a big deal.

00:22:20.080 | We need to be very, very careful with how we utilize this.

00:22:24.280 | Now, the final reason why I deleted this episode is just simply that we're dealing in an area

00:22:30.080 | that's very serious.

00:22:32.080 | And I make abundantly clear in the audio file that you're about to hear that I don't know

00:22:35.640 | whether ivermectin or any drug or any vitamin or anything is effective and helpful.

00:22:41.440 | I really think I'm pretty fair on this, that I don't know, but I give you my mental models

00:22:45.760 | for being aware of it.

00:22:46.960 | But there is genuine, and in this show, you'll hear me, I read the FDA's comments on the

00:22:51.920 | subject.

00:22:53.360 | But I balance the FDA's comments against other versions of other countries' FDA's, FSDA's,

00:23:01.600 | federal administrations of their drugs.

00:23:05.000 | And it's not, in my opinion, quite as clear cut.

00:23:07.720 | And so I try to figure out how to deal with it.

00:23:09.160 | But please, we're dealing with quite literal life and death and sickness here in many regards.

00:23:14.360 | And so it's a very important topic.

00:23:16.240 | And I'm trying to give you some mental models that I use that I believe are useful and helpful

00:23:22.360 | while specifically abstaining from commenting on the medical issues.

00:23:27.040 | And while I believe you are fully entitled to have an opinion on medical issues for yourself

00:23:33.160 | and for those that you care about, and you should have an opinion, when you go and you

00:23:36.760 | teach someone else, or you take it upon yourself to go and to share with someone else what

00:23:42.000 | they should or shouldn't do, that's a very, very heavy load.

00:23:45.440 | Anyone who teaches is always held to a heavier standard, and rightly so.

00:23:50.200 | Because it's one thing for you to have control and autonomy over your own body and your own

00:23:55.000 | affairs and that of your family.

00:23:56.680 | It's another thing for you to influence other people.

00:23:59.160 | And so all who teach are held to a higher standard.

00:24:02.160 | They're judged by a higher standard.

00:24:04.200 | So I'm trying to present these models in an appropriate way without walking, you know,

00:24:10.680 | without getting out of my lane, without going into places where I can't comment on.

00:24:14.900 | So with that preamble and with that warning, here is the now undeleted episode of the show

00:24:23.780 | from early last week, covering this controversy and presenting my mental models of how I deal

00:24:30.140 | with information that is constantly new, how I deal with information that is in controversy,

00:24:36.400 | and how I think about specifically the management and the actions associated with that information.

00:24:42.740 | Enjoy.

00:24:43.740 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:24:49.780 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:24:53.460 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:24:56.700 | My name is Joshua Sheets, and today I want to share with you a few mental models that

00:25:00.380 | I use to do my very best.

00:25:04.300 | I'll seek to use humble, thoughtful language, to do my very best to be successful in the

00:25:11.100 | information age.

00:25:13.020 | You and I are living in the information age.

00:25:15.620 | I'm not sure what the current, the next age is going to be, but I think we're still in

00:25:19.380 | the information age.

00:25:21.300 | And what it means is that information runs the world.

00:25:25.940 | Access to information is a key secret to success.

00:25:30.880 | Those who control information flows are very much those who are in control of what's happening

00:25:36.100 | in the world.

00:25:37.360 | And so in order for us to be successful in the information age, we need to have some

00:25:41.380 | models that we can use reliably again and again to help us to move closer towards our

00:25:47.540 | goals.

00:25:48.880 | If you apply this overall lens that we're living in the information age to so many modern

00:25:54.140 | debates, modern arguments, modern controversies, then you will understand more and more about

00:26:00.700 | why the world works the way that it does today.

00:26:02.980 | It has not always been that way.

00:26:05.480 | The information age is not, has not been the same throughout every time in human history.

00:26:11.180 | But at the moment, many of the debates that we are involved in relate to this transition,

00:26:16.980 | this fact that we are in the information age.

00:26:19.720 | Think about everything from censorship or fighting about who's right and who's data,

00:26:24.820 | you know, fake news, alternative facts, all of this arguments, all of these arguments

00:26:30.020 | relate to information.

00:26:32.140 | And what has happened is that we find ourselves living, most of us, no, we find ourselves

00:26:37.660 | living, all of us, in a society that is exceedingly poorly equipped to properly assimilate information,

00:26:46.900 | search for information, acquire information, analyze that information, study it, and draw

00:26:52.820 | meaningful actions from that information.

00:26:57.540 | What you need to remember is that most of our fellow citizens were conditioned to function

00:27:04.660 | ineffectively in the industrial age.

00:27:08.780 | This is the whole basis of how school was developed and why it looks the way that we,

00:27:15.140 | the way that it has for the last few centuries.

00:27:18.020 | Our fellow citizens have been conditioned from the very first few years of their life

00:27:24.300 | to sit quietly in a seat, to listen to what is said from the front of the classroom, to

00:27:30.300 | read and regurgitate verbatim the approved sources selected by the teachers and administrators

00:27:37.660 | under whom they studied, and to make sure that their opinions fall within an acceptable

00:27:42.660 | range of opinions.

00:27:45.500 | Write what we tell you to write, regurgitate it back to us.

00:27:48.720 | That is the world, the milieu in which the majority of our fellow citizens have been

00:27:53.580 | raised.

00:27:54.580 | Well, now we don't find ourselves in an industrial age anymore, we find ourselves in the information

00:27:59.260 | age, and thus we are exposed on a daily basis to the perils of our population having been

00:28:07.700 | prepared for a world that no longer exists.

00:28:10.980 | And we find ourselves in an uncomfortable transition period that's very difficult and

00:28:19.260 | filled with strife as our population around transitions itself to the world that does

00:28:25.260 | exist.

00:28:26.260 | Now, I believe that this will happen, but we are in that very painful in-between period

00:28:31.380 | in which it is very slowly happening and very painfully happening all around us.

00:28:36.500 | Now, this is a lens in which I view the world, and to me it makes a lot of sense.

00:28:41.860 | And I see daily confirmation of the usefulness of this lens when I scroll through my Facebook

00:28:48.220 | feed or I read the essays or look at the controversies of the day, and you see that the majority

00:28:53.560 | of people are locked in a – they are living in a world in which they are unequipped to

00:28:57.780 | handle the massive increase in information, and it needs a significantly higher set of

00:29:04.180 | skills, again, to acquire the information that's needed, etc.

00:29:09.400 | And so I've been working on this, I want you to be working on this, and I'm not an

00:29:16.100 | expert at it, but I do my very best to continue the process of growth and learning and become

00:29:22.100 | an expert at it.

00:29:23.600 | And in that process, I have developed a few mental models that I steadily rely on to try

00:29:28.700 | to help me process and effectively analyze information.

00:29:33.620 | I have the unique benefit of being on the record with my analysis.

00:29:39.340 | I try to speak my thoughts to you.

00:29:43.100 | I try to use a flow of reasoning, a flow of argument, so that you can follow them.

00:29:49.980 | That way, if you like something I have to say, you know how I got there, and you can

00:29:55.860 | decide whether you agree with it or not.

00:29:58.820 | And on the other hand, if I'm wrong about something that I have to say, then you can

00:30:03.900 | identify the error in my logical argument.

00:30:07.820 | This is one reason why I'm well-suited to the longer-form content that you find here

00:30:11.300 | on Radical Personal Finance.

00:30:12.300 | I try to tell you, this is what I think is true, and here is why I think it is true,

00:30:17.660 | so that you can follow me and either say, "I agree with Joshua," or "I disagree with

00:30:22.740 | Joshua, and here's where I think he goes wrong."

00:30:25.260 | And then we all win.

00:30:26.780 | And doing this for yourself is something that I want you to do.

00:30:29.420 | And again, I want to share some mental models.

00:30:32.180 | Now I'm inspired to do this show as a result of a few pieces of feedback from the previous

00:30:37.660 | episode.

00:30:39.100 | And in that previous episode, I shared with you what I think is going to happen with the

00:30:44.100 | coronavirus pandemic.

00:30:45.780 | I talked about freedom in the United States related to forced vaccination, and I wanted

00:30:51.860 | to share with you what I think will happen.

00:30:54.580 | The summary statement is that I think we are six to 18 months away from the end of the

00:30:59.860 | pandemic, unless a very powerful new variant of this particular disease emerges.

00:31:07.740 | I think that we're very close to the end of all of this hoopla about the pandemic.

00:31:13.900 | I don't use that word to minimize the impact of the pandemic, just meaning that I think

00:31:19.260 | that we're close to the end.

00:31:20.980 | And I've given my arguments as to why.

00:31:23.140 | Put simply, they are, number one, we understand very clearly at this point in time who is

00:31:28.620 | most affected by this virus and how the virus is most likely to affect them.

00:31:33.060 | We understand that, speaking generally, coronavirus as a serious condition affects the older and

00:31:39.460 | sicker people, not younger and healthier people.

00:31:42.940 | Those people are infected and pass the infection along, but they don't generally receive serious

00:31:48.220 | symptoms in the vast majority of cases.

00:31:50.540 | And this is quite freeing because a significant portion of the population is able to go about

00:31:57.300 | their daily lives without worrying about being a severe case of coronavirus.

00:32:05.140 | The second argument that I made is that we have developed and are continuing to develop

00:32:10.140 | better and better therapeutics, better ways of treating sick people so that we can minimize

00:32:15.900 | the worst end case scenarios that result in somebody dying in the intensive care unit.

00:32:20.620 | Rather, we can treat them as outpatients and/or we can provide just simply, I forget the medical

00:32:27.660 | word for it, but just the basic care that they need to deal with the sickness in their

00:32:31.140 | home and then move on.

00:32:32.680 | There does still continue to be significant numbers of concerns with so-called long COVID,

00:32:37.000 | but people are studying and making progress on that as well.

00:32:39.860 | And then the third off-ramp that I described is the development of preventative treatments

00:32:46.380 | and/or vaccinations.

00:32:47.700 | So here we understand that number one, the impact of natural immunity is very, very high.

00:32:55.040 | People who have been previously infected with a natural expression of COVID retain very

00:33:01.160 | high levels of antibodies for a significant amount of time and thus are well protected

00:33:05.400 | from a second bout with the disease.

00:33:07.980 | And in addition, many of the vaccinations around the world are proving themselves to

00:33:11.940 | be quite effective, at the very least, at minimizing the most extreme medical events.

00:33:18.340 | And while they may or may not be minimizing the number of people who are infected and/or

00:33:22.180 | the transmission of the disease, at least they are minimizing the hardest medical, the

00:33:30.500 | worst medical cases for those who are fully vaccinated.

00:33:35.380 | And in addition, that we are finding that the short-term data that we have on vaccination

00:33:41.940 | so far appears to be quite good in terms of the safety of those vaccines.

00:33:45.500 | And so this is influencing more and more of an uptake of the vaccines on a global basis.

00:33:52.100 | So in addition, I think that people see this and recognize, and regardless of where the

00:33:57.300 | government authorities are in their codes, once people see and recognize this data, they

00:34:04.580 | are generally simply deciding to move on with their lives.

00:34:07.940 | And this is putting tremendous political pressure on those governments that are still deciding

00:34:12.420 | to put significant restrictions on society.

00:34:17.420 | That was my argument in about three minutes that I presented in the previous episode.

00:34:22.140 | However, during that episode, I said a vulgar, unpermitted word.

00:34:29.880 | That word begins with I and ends with vermectin, ivermectin.

00:34:34.620 | And I mentioned in passing when I was discussing the development of therapeutics and/or preventative

00:34:40.700 | treatments, I mentioned that some people are taking ivermectin as a prophylactic with an

00:34:47.300 | attempt to minimize the severity of a COVID infection.

00:34:52.080 | And one of my listeners wrote to me, well, several of my listeners wrote to me in various

00:34:56.180 | formats, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.

00:34:59.460 | Which by the way, the best way to do all this stuff is just with Twitter.

00:35:01.620 | Follow me on Twitter @JoshuaSheets.

00:35:03.340 | Interact with me there publicly.

00:35:05.660 | I only occasionally go into the DMs, but interact with me there publicly and I'll answer your

00:35:09.660 | stuff there as long as you're not annoying.

00:35:11.260 | I block people who are obnoxious and annoying, but if you, I don't mind disagreements as

00:35:17.100 | long as you are respectful in your tone.

00:35:20.520 | So Sarah writes to me and she writes this, quote, "Whatever media rabbit hole you've

00:35:26.300 | gone down, please stop.

00:35:30.540 | Ivermectin isn't people medicine.

00:35:34.220 | Your research of the science is clearly flawed.

00:35:40.140 | Your analysis drips of self-reinforcing politics.

00:35:46.500 | I listen to your podcast weekly.

00:35:48.860 | I've been a patron.

00:35:50.100 | I'm disappointed."

00:35:51.100 | End quote.

00:35:52.100 | Now I thought this was an interesting topic and while I really hate these debates on medical

00:35:59.820 | treatments, I hate the debates because they're so dumb.

00:36:04.340 | They have this level of tribal identity regarding, "Do you believe in Ivermectin?" or "Do you

00:36:09.700 | believe in hydroxychloroquine?" or "Do you believe in vaccines?"

00:36:12.740 | It's so dumb, the whole stupid tribalism that has emerged about this.

00:36:18.060 | So I despise these debates, but I consider this to be a useful case study for us to talk

00:36:23.220 | about some of these mental models of how do we deal with information, how do we analyze

00:36:29.860 | it, and how do we decide our personal approach to it and what we're actually going to do.

00:36:34.620 | I'm going to use briefly the backstory of Ivermectin just to inform you on it, how I

00:36:39.980 | understand the facts to be, and then I'm going to primarily use financial examples because

00:36:46.060 | I believe that if you have these mental models in your head and if you use them, you will

00:36:50.340 | get better financial results.

00:36:53.460 | So I need a few minutes to explain my understanding of the Ivermectin debate to which Sarah is

00:36:59.700 | alluding here and the current status of this particular drug with regard to COVID-19 treatment.

00:37:09.900 | I need to begin with a disclaimer, which is not inserted for any kind of just random regard.

00:37:15.460 | It's real.

00:37:16.460 | I do not know.

00:37:18.740 | I genuinely do not know if Ivermectin is useful in the treatment of a disease of specifically

00:37:28.460 | COVID-19.

00:37:29.460 | Of course, it's useful in other treatment of other diseases, but I do not know if Ivermectin

00:37:35.020 | is useful in the treatment of COVID-19.

00:37:39.740 | I will tell you why I am okay with not knowing and what I have done or what I will do or

00:37:45.740 | would do, even though I do not know what is actually true about that particular question.

00:37:53.460 | Basically, I'm going to tell you, I don't know, but I'm going to try to share with you

00:37:56.620 | why I don't think it matters in this situation, whether I do or don't know.

00:38:03.100 | Let's begin with a little bit of backstory.

00:38:04.940 | When COVID-19 first came on the scene, it was shrouded in lack of information.

00:38:13.200 | We understood that supposedly the virus came from a wet seafood market in China in the

00:38:20.640 | province of Wuhan, just a block or two away from this level four infectious disease facility,

00:38:28.880 | and it emerged and seemingly came from, again, one of these wet markets.

00:38:34.060 | And then it infected people and it spread across China.

00:38:37.060 | Then of course it was perhaps spreading across the world, but the information on it was quite

00:38:41.740 | shrouded in mystery.

00:38:43.100 | We didn't know what the markers of it were.

00:38:45.140 | We didn't know how it worked.

00:38:46.340 | We didn't know anything about it.

00:38:47.820 | And so very quickly we started to gather information.

00:38:50.020 | Again, in the early days, all the information came from China, which was by definition suspect

00:38:54.300 | because of their long history of lying to the world on anything related to these topics

00:38:59.800 | or anything else.

00:39:01.860 | And so we had to wait until we could get information from outside of China.

00:39:06.420 | And the information that was gathered was trying to figure out what is this disease,

00:39:09.680 | how does it work, how transmissible is it, right?

00:39:12.100 | So we had the fog of lack of information.

00:39:15.300 | We didn't know is this disease transmissible as an aerosol or is it droplets?

00:39:22.080 | How is it actually being transmitted?

00:39:24.260 | We didn't know how infectious people were.

00:39:26.260 | We didn't understand the incubation period very much.

00:39:29.020 | We didn't know all of the symptoms and we didn't understand exactly how to treat those

00:39:34.580 | symptoms along the way.

00:39:36.560 | And so thus the whole medical establishment all around the world went to work to try to

00:39:41.360 | find answers to these questions and try to identify how can we treat this.

00:39:46.840 | And along the way, different treatments were tried, different things were done along the

00:39:51.860 | way to try to figure out what treatments were effective.

00:39:57.280 | Now in the United States, this particular topic became very highly politicized and it

00:40:02.700 | became extremely tribal.

00:40:04.600 | I think most notably, now it was this way from the very beginning, right?

00:40:08.000 | In the very beginning, it was Republicans who were saying, "Hey, we need to be careful

00:40:13.040 | of this."

00:40:14.040 | And then all of the Democrats were saying, "No, that's ridiculous.

00:40:16.520 | You're just fear-mongering.

00:40:17.520 | It's just the flu and you should go out and march in the streets of New York and you should

00:40:20.840 | go out and do all the stuff."

00:40:22.080 | And so it became super, super political from the very beginning.

00:40:25.720 | Then it became racism, right?

00:40:28.200 | Because shutting down the borders and it's racist and you're trying to close us off to

00:40:32.080 | Asia and it's called the China virus and we're increasing harassment on Asians by calling

00:40:38.720 | it the China virus.

00:40:39.760 | And so that led to more of it.

00:40:41.780 | Then President Trump said, "We're going to develop a vaccine super fast."

00:40:45.600 | And all of the lefties said, "Well, I would never trust that vaccine that President Trump

00:40:49.120 | developed.

00:40:50.120 | Who's going to actually take that?"

00:40:52.440 | Then President Trump talked about hydroxychloroquine, right?

00:40:56.800 | There were some indications that this cheap and widely available drug might have some

00:41:01.460 | effect on treatment of coronavirus.

00:41:04.680 | This became this great big debate and argument because some doctors said that, "Hey, we think

00:41:09.520 | that this drug is helpful."

00:41:10.880 | Other doctors said, "No, we don't think it is helpful."

00:41:13.560 | President Trump said, "I think it's really good and really helpful."

00:41:17.160 | But then that poisoned the well and everyone was upset about it.

00:41:21.160 | Well, hydroxychloroquine faded into the background and we moved on to various more controversies

00:41:26.280 | and there were all the controversies about the masks, etc.

00:41:28.000 | So it became this massive arguments about what do we do, what do we not do all along

00:41:33.640 | the way.

00:41:34.640 | Well, perhaps a year or so ago, maybe a little less, I don't remember, we started to hear

00:41:38.840 | indications of a drug called ivermectin being used by people for the treatment of coronavirus.

00:41:46.520 | But once again, I think perhaps even tainted by the hydroxychloroquine saga, this particular

00:41:51.840 | drug, especially in the United States, became quickly controversial.

00:41:56.020 | And what my international listeners need to understand is that the United States has this

00:41:59.480 | really weird, very, very restrictive system related to drugs where all kinds of, basically

00:42:08.980 | virtually all drugs except coffee and alcohol and some mild pain relievers have to be dispensed

00:42:15.220 | with a prescription.

00:42:17.080 | This is very different than many other countries where even very powerful antibiotics are available

00:42:22.280 | without a prescription.

00:42:23.320 | You can just simply go and buy them.

00:42:24.640 | In the United States, it's not that way.

00:42:26.760 | And so you have to involve your doctor in purchasing these different things.

00:42:31.200 | And so the news started to come out that, hey, there's this drug called ivermectin that

00:42:34.440 | may be helpful and it's being studied.

00:42:36.600 | Well, where we are today is that this has been a subject of considerable debate, lots

00:42:42.220 | and lots of debate.

00:42:43.220 | If you survey much of the news media in the West, you will see that ivermectin is called

00:42:49.400 | a hoax, right?

00:42:50.540 | The use of ivermectin is considered to be a hoax.

00:42:53.640 | BBC just did an article in England.

00:42:55.900 | You can find dramatic articles all across the US American media of saying, hey, the

00:43:00.360 | use of ivermectin is a hoax.

00:43:02.160 | It's not the same everywhere and you have to look at those things for yourself.

00:43:05.000 | I think this really came to a head, what was it, a month or two ago when Joe Rogan was

00:43:12.520 | diagnosed with coronavirus and he came out a few days after his diagnosis and he talked

00:43:18.520 | about how he'd had one really rough day, but he basically beat all the rough symptoms of

00:43:22.320 | COVID.

00:43:23.320 | And he talked about his treatment protocol, which included, among a few other treatments,

00:43:27.160 | included ivermectin.

00:43:29.200 | And man, the US American media went crazy and there were story after story saying, no

00:43:34.760 | exaggeration, that Joe Rogan took horse dewormer for his disease, horse dewormer.

00:43:42.480 | Now was that accurate?

00:43:43.960 | Well, of course it was not accurate.

00:43:45.440 | It was stupid.

00:43:46.440 | It was a flat out hoax.

00:43:47.440 | It was a lie.

00:43:48.440 | It was fake news that Joe Rogan took horse dewormer.

00:43:52.360 | But this was alleged because ivermectin not only has been used for many years in humans,

00:43:58.860 | but has also been used very effectively as an anti-parasite treatment in horses and other

00:44:04.400 | animals.

00:44:05.520 | And so it's commonly found in, it is the active substance in this horse dewormer, this horse

00:44:12.080 | paste that you can get to dose your horses with and many other animals as well.

00:44:17.120 | And so why was this the case?

00:44:18.720 | Well, because of the weird system in the United States of restricted access via prescription,

00:44:25.480 | people couldn't find ivermectin tablets on the shelf with the human variety.

00:44:30.720 | And so many people found that they could quickly go and they could buy horse dewormer, so-called

00:44:36.200 | horse paste, of which the active ingredient is ivermectin, and they could take that and

00:44:41.360 | have the usefulness of this particular drug for them and their families.

00:44:47.600 | So that was the basic argument.

00:44:51.320 | So this is not that controversial of a thing, right?

00:44:56.820 | So one of the things that for years, I teach preparedness, I've been involved in the preparedness

00:45:02.740 | movement for my entire life, and one of the things that people who are preparing for an

00:45:08.500 | uncertain future often want to stockpile is medical supplies.

00:45:13.760 | When you recognize that if you are in danger, medically speaking, you might need to have

00:45:19.000 | your own supply of medical supplies, you go out and you stock up on the things that you

00:45:23.400 | might need.

00:45:24.760 | And so this may be as simple as having a first aid kit in your car.

00:45:27.840 | It may be as simple as putting in a deep supply of bandages or rubber gloves or face masks

00:45:32.400 | or hydrogen peroxide or alcohol, et cetera.

00:45:37.180 | Some people take it much farther, right?

00:45:38.600 | Some people go and buy a suturing kit.

00:45:41.480 | The idea is, hey, I might not know how to sew somebody up, but if I've got some of these

00:45:45.860 | medical instruments, perhaps there's a friend of mine who's a nurse or a doctor who may

00:45:49.480 | know how to do that.

00:45:50.480 | And so I'll stockpile some of the equipment and the ability to keep it sanitized, sterile

00:45:55.800 | I mean, when I need it.

00:45:57.860 | And so one of the major challenges in the United States, though, is how do I get my

00:46:01.480 | hands on basic antibiotics?

00:46:04.800 | Because there very well could come a time when perhaps supply chains are disrupted,

00:46:09.720 | when perhaps the medical system is overrun, and I might need some basic antibiotics, even

00:46:15.760 | for a relatively mundane injury.

00:46:18.580 | And antibiotics could potentially save my life or a family member's life, but they're

00:46:22.000 | not available.

00:46:23.120 | I can't get my doctor on the phone.

00:46:25.440 | The pharmacy is sold out.

00:46:27.360 | The pharmacy is shut down because the city has been looted.

00:46:30.680 | The pharmacy isn't allowed to sell it to me without a license because blah, blah, blah,

00:46:34.440 | whatever reason.

00:46:35.440 | So how can I stock up on antibiotics?

00:46:37.400 | So in this case, there are three basic pathways to be able to stock up on your own personal

00:46:42.600 | home supply of antibiotics.

00:46:45.500 | Pathway number one is ask your doctor for a prescription.

00:46:48.800 | And so you explain to your doctor, "Hey, I'd like to stock up on this.

00:46:51.080 | Would you be willing to do it?"

00:46:52.300 | And some people are able to do that.

00:46:53.760 | Much of the time, though, that fails.

00:46:55.400 | Pathway number two is to either go to a country where you can get these available and just

00:47:00.720 | bring them in with you or go to a place where the culture is different.

00:47:04.840 | So here, very commonly, for example, in Latin America, all throughout Central America, antibiotics

00:47:09.400 | are not a controlled substance.

00:47:10.840 | You can just walk into a pharmacy.

00:47:12.680 | The pharmacist in most of these countries is a doctor or functions like a doctor and

00:47:19.240 | is involved in actually helping to -- it's not just somebody who fills a prescription

00:47:23.860 | for you, but rather is somebody who is helping you to diagnose your needs and give you kind

00:47:29.140 | of frontline care.

00:47:30.320 | And then you can just simply buy antibiotics.

00:47:34.020 | And so I've done this routinely throughout Latin America.

00:47:36.920 | You just go and you buy antibiotics when you need it.

00:47:39.800 | And then number three -- sorry, in the United States, right, you may go to the Hispanic

00:47:45.840 | part of town and go to the Hispanic pharmacy and you'll find that the Mexican guy -- or

00:47:51.320 | the local drugstore, local corner store, and you'll find that the Mexican guy there behind

00:47:55.140 | the counter is just happy to sell you the antibiotics and you can stock up that way.

00:47:58.640 | So that's a good solution as well.

00:48:00.400 | The third solution that people rely upon is antibiotics created for and marketed to owners

00:48:09.160 | of animals.

00:48:11.120 | In the United States, their veterinarians and veterinary supply houses are able to create

00:48:16.080 | the antibiotics for the treatment of animals.

00:48:18.860 | And especially in the area of fish antibiotics and bird antibiotics, you have good formulations

00:48:24.740 | of the antibiotics in their pure form that people can buy.

00:48:28.800 | And you can buy them without a prescription.

00:48:30.960 | And so this is the best way for you to purchase basic antibiotics for yourself to stock up

00:48:36.680 | on.

00:48:37.680 | So you need to buy them and then you need to make sure that you have information and

00:48:42.240 | literature on appropriate dosing so that you can figure out how to convert your bottle

00:48:46.520 | of fish antibiotics into human -- proper human doses based upon whatever it is that you're

00:48:52.420 | trying to treat.

00:48:53.920 | Now I don't -- I personally don't like antibiotics.

00:48:56.320 | I don't want to take them.

00:48:57.440 | I take them -- I think that what seems to be obvious is that there are many parts and

00:49:04.360 | many times in the U.S. population that we have consumed too many antibiotics.

00:49:10.400 | We have killed our gut bacteria unnecessarily and this has led to poorer health.

00:49:16.960 | And that many times these antibiotics have been abused and thus even many diseases themselves

00:49:23.360 | are becoming stronger and more able to resist antibiotics.

00:49:28.640 | I don't think that's particularly controversial.

00:49:30.520 | That's my opinion.

00:49:31.520 | And so I don't like antibiotics.

00:49:34.720 | And if I'm prescribed them, I ask questions and then if the doctor convinces me, "No,

00:49:39.980 | you really need this," then I'm going to take it.

00:49:41.240 | And of course you should always do the full course of antibiotics, take it properly as

00:49:45.080 | it's prescribed and do the whole thing.

00:49:46.800 | But the point is I don't like to take pills.

00:49:49.440 | I don't like to take any medicine.

00:49:50.440 | I don't like to take any pills.

00:49:51.600 | I don't like antibiotics.

00:49:53.240 | But for years I have stocked up on antibiotics.

00:49:56.800 | And the reason why is very simple.

00:50:01.200 | There could be a situation in which I might need some antibiotics to save my life or someone

00:50:06.800 | else's life and I might not be able to get them at that time.

00:50:11.920 | And so I would rather put in place the insurance policy of having some very basic antibiotics

00:50:17.640 | in my home stored medical supplies so that if my child had an infected wound or something

00:50:25.560 | like that, I would have something to treat it with if I can't get to the hospital and

00:50:29.680 | actually get a proper treatment.

00:50:31.560 | So to me it makes all the sense in the world to use antibiotics as they are intended in

00:50:37.680 | that kind of scenario and to be prepared for it because that might happen.

00:50:42.280 | So this is the same basic principle that people have applied to horse paste.

00:50:47.760 | They found out, "Hey, ivermectin could potentially be a useful drug for me and horse paste has

00:50:55.600 | it, so let me go and get some in case I can't get it because I know that the horse paste

00:51:01.920 | is available.

00:51:02.920 | I may or may not be able to get a prescription for ivermectin.

00:51:05.160 | I may or may not be able to get my hands on ivermectin, but I know that the horse paste

00:51:10.320 | is there, so let me go and get it."

00:51:13.840 | So this became quite the controversy in the United States.

00:51:16.080 | Joe Rogan was accused many times of having taken horse dewormer and you can see here

00:51:21.200 | in Sarah's argument to me here that when she says this statement, again let me reread

00:51:27.400 | you what she said, "Joshua, whatever media rabbit hole you've gone down, please stop.

00:51:35.680 | Ivermectin isn't people medicine."

00:51:38.000 | Again I repeat, ivermectin isn't people medicine.

00:51:42.680 | Now is that true?

00:51:44.540 | Is it true that ivermectin isn't people medicine?

00:51:49.360 | As far as I'm concerned, it's obviously entirely false.

00:51:53.320 | It's an ignorant statement.

00:51:54.840 | It's my understanding that ivermectin has been at least, the number I heard was 3.7

00:52:00.640 | billion doses of ivermectin prescribed and taken around the world throughout its history.

00:52:06.440 | It's my understanding that the guy who invented it received a major prize for having invented

00:52:10.600 | it and that it's considered to be a miracle drug.

00:52:14.520 | And so that in and of itself is a completely flawed thing.

00:52:19.680 | You cannot say ivermectin isn't people medicine.

00:52:22.520 | It's an FDA approved drug for its particular application.

00:52:26.480 | The makers of the drug both originally claimed, well they've changed recently, originally

00:52:32.560 | claimed that it had very, very few side effects, it was very, very safe, etc. until it started

00:52:38.640 | being used for COVID-19 and then they came out and said, "Well we're not so sure."

00:52:42.440 | But what is remarkable about this drug is that this drug is off patent.

00:52:46.280 | So thus it is very cheap and it is widely available around the world, which is why people

00:52:50.400 | were buying horse paste as a way of getting their hands upon it.

00:52:54.040 | Now what does all this matter?

00:52:55.280 | This is just backstory.

00:52:56.840 | And what I've thus far done is I believe I've made factual statements.

00:53:01.160 | I don't think that there's anything that I have said in the last 20 minutes or so talking

00:53:05.120 | about this that is not a simple matter of factual record.

00:53:10.480 | So here is the next question.

00:53:14.320 | Is ivermectin an effective treatment of COVID-19?

00:53:20.920 | Or is ivermectin something that people should take as a prophylactic against COVID-19?

00:53:28.240 | And here is where we move away from fact into speculation.

00:53:32.700 | But we need to do a good job of absorbing information related to this particular topic.

00:53:39.240 | Now I'll briefly discuss what I understand the information to be.

00:53:42.500 | First of all, in the United States, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, warns against

00:53:49.720 | taking ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.

00:53:54.960 | They specifically say, "You should not take it, and we do not think that it is effective."

00:54:00.880 | I will read you from the FDA fact sheet at FDA.gov, quoting, "Here's what you need to

00:54:06.600 | know about ivermectin.

00:54:07.880 | 1.

00:54:08.880 | The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19

00:54:13.440 | in humans or animals.

00:54:15.160 | Ivermectin is approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms

00:54:18.920 | and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea.

00:54:21.600 | 2.

00:54:22.600 | The currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.

00:54:27.560 | Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19

00:54:32.280 | in people are ongoing.

00:54:34.680 | 3.

00:54:35.680 | Taking large doses of ivermectin is dangerous.

00:54:38.280 | 4.

00:54:39.280 | If your healthcare provider writes you an ivermectin prescription, fill it through a

00:54:42.320 | legitimate source such as a pharmacy and take it exactly as prescribed.

00:54:46.040 | 5.

00:54:47.080 | Never use medications intended for animals on yourself or other people.

00:54:51.120 | Animal ivermectin products are very different from those approved for humans.

00:54:54.800 | Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans is dangerous."

00:55:01.320 | And you can go on and understand more of what they have said.

00:55:05.600 | So the question is, has the FDA here said that ivermectin is not an effective treatment

00:55:13.600 | of COVID-19?

00:55:16.800 | Answer is no.

00:55:18.200 | The FDA has said we have not authorized or approved ivermectin for this use and currently

00:55:24.280 | available data do not show that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.

00:55:29.000 | Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19

00:55:33.040 | are ongoing.

00:55:34.400 | And so we move out of a realm of facts and we move into speculation.

00:55:39.680 | Now we could contrast the FDA results.

00:55:43.400 | Probably the best story to contrast it would be what happened in India.

00:55:48.080 | India, if you'll remember, some months ago had a massive surge of COVID-19.

00:55:53.960 | And in a nation with a billion people, that massive surge was indeed massive.

00:55:58.440 | We saw news article after news article and video of just heartbreaking scenes from across

00:56:03.560 | the Indian subcontinent with hospitals full and people dying outside on the streets waiting

00:56:09.400 | to get in and complete lack of oxygen, etc.

00:56:13.160 | But then the Indian rates, the rates of infection with COVID-19 had a massive decline, an absolute

00:56:22.360 | massive decline.

00:56:24.120 | And the emergency went from acute crisis to just the kind of the normal ongoing of some

00:56:30.040 | people infected, some people dying, some people treated.

00:56:32.480 | And this just massive decline in the rate of infection.

00:56:35.660 | And so you ask, oh, wait a second, what happened?

00:56:37.800 | What happened?

00:56:38.800 | Was it vaccination?

00:56:39.800 | Well, although vaccination rates increased in India, it didn't seem to be vaccination

00:56:44.680 | because the vaccination rates didn't increase as quickly as some other options.

00:56:51.480 | Was it some other factor, right?

00:56:53.120 | Was it seasonal?

00:56:54.120 | There are many factors that could have it, right?

00:56:56.440 | Maybe there were more people infected than you knew.

00:56:58.600 | And so people were reaching natural immunity.

00:57:00.800 | All of these are good hypotheses.

00:57:02.400 | And I'm sure dozens more that should be tested properly with good data analysis.

00:57:07.480 | But many people noticed that India had started to send out what they called home medical

00:57:14.960 | kits.

00:57:16.400 | And these home medical kits had a number of different things.

00:57:20.600 | First, they had fairly normal things like face masks, hand sanitizer, alcohol wipes

00:57:28.200 | and gloves.

00:57:29.200 | That's not particularly controversial.

00:57:31.000 | They also include some tools for self-medical monitoring, such as a pulse oximeter and a

00:57:38.040 | thermometer so that people could figure out how much oxygen was in their blood and measure

00:57:42.560 | their own personal temperature.

00:57:45.040 | But what else did they include?

00:57:46.200 | Well, they included vitamin C tablets, vitamin D tablets, multivitamin tablets with zinc,

00:57:56.800 | ivermectin, doxycycline, and paracetamol.

00:58:04.000 | And they gave instructions for people for this use.

00:58:06.400 | And then they followed up with a regimen of reporting of people calling in and basically

00:58:11.720 | physicians and government workers from afar monitoring their temperature.

00:58:15.720 | So they would be active in monitoring their temperature, monitoring their oxygen levels,

00:58:20.000 | et cetera.

00:58:21.000 | But they also gave these drugs and these vitamins.

00:58:24.080 | So the question here is what happened, right?

00:58:27.260 | There is no proof at the moment that specifically ivermectin caused this massive decrease in

00:58:34.520 | sickness.

00:58:35.520 | That's unproven.

00:58:37.920 | It's not known.

00:58:39.040 | But what is interesting is that all of these substances, this was what the Indian government

00:58:42.980 | chose to send in a home medical kit.

00:58:45.080 | And there has been compelling evidence for these things improving results throughout

00:58:50.760 | the pandemic.

00:58:52.400 | The vitamin D, the consumption of vitamin D has been since the very early days.

00:58:57.960 | I've been taking supplementary vitamin D and doing my best to get extra sunshine since

00:59:03.280 | I don't know how long, but in excess of a year.

00:59:06.400 | And then making sure that my family take excess vitamin D. Now, will that make sure that I

00:59:10.600 | don't get COVID?

00:59:11.880 | I don't know of anyone that would say it, but there has seemed to be a good correlation

00:59:16.040 | between people with proper vitamin D levels and better, easier cases of COVID.

00:59:21.640 | And similar things with vitamin C, et cetera.

00:59:23.920 | And ivermectin is one of those things that might fall into that space.

00:59:28.200 | And so you have a war of data, right?

00:59:29.880 | Who is to say, right?

00:59:31.040 | The FDA says this certain thing, but here we have this other thing from the Indian government.

00:59:35.560 | Now there's more controversy around the world.

00:59:37.880 | These are not the only two governments that are involved in this, but you see other governments

00:59:41.560 | following suit.

00:59:42.560 | There are a number of Latin American countries that are following suit, sending out these

00:59:47.520 | home kits and encouraging people to take these drugs and these vitamins to potentially treat

00:59:53.160 | their symptoms.

00:59:54.520 | But then you have other governments saying, no, you shouldn't do this.

00:59:57.920 | And so that's where we are.

00:59:59.580 | We don't know is the point.

01:00:02.000 | What do we have?

01:00:03.000 | Well, we have a lot of anecdotal information, anecdotes that show that, hey, you know what?

01:00:08.360 | This might be the case.

01:00:09.880 | Now, is ivermectin dangerous?

01:00:12.800 | And if you're wondering when I'm going to get to the money, I promise you in just a

01:00:15.840 | moment, but this is important because I'm using this non-financial thing and then I'm

01:00:19.920 | going to take it to financial topics.

01:00:21.840 | Is ivermectin dangerous?

01:00:23.200 | The FDA says without question that ivermectin can be dangerous if taking in large doses,

01:00:29.920 | right?

01:00:30.920 | So they say here, taking large doses of ivermectin is dangerous.

01:00:34.600 | Now as I've followed this particular argument, I've come across a number of people who talk

01:00:38.600 | about it.

01:00:39.600 | And so let me read you an interesting Twitter thread.

01:00:42.780 | This particular Twitter thread comes from Mark Urema, who according to his unverified

01:00:47.120 | Twitter profile with 1,220 followers, is the medical director of AHS Poison and Drug Information

01:00:54.680 | Services from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

01:00:58.360 | He's the section chief of clinical pharmacology and toxicology.

01:01:02.560 | So Mark says this.

01:01:04.760 | He's talking about the calls that they are receiving to their poison hotline on ivermectin.

01:01:12.860 | I will read you verbatim, quoting from his tweet thread from 10 days ago, October 5.

01:01:18.860 | He says a thread on some ivermectin poison center calls.

01:01:21.660 | One, took ivermectin horse paste, not vaccinated.

01:01:25.300 | Patient is sure they have COVID, but not tested.

01:01:27.980 | Feels weird in head, tightness in ears.

01:01:30.140 | Two, went to use hand sanitizer, but instead used ivermectin lotion in an alcohol base.

01:01:35.140 | Three, children received COVID, parent giving ivermectin afterwards to "prevent negative

01:01:41.340 | reaction to the vaccine."

01:01:42.900 | Four, friend overdosed on ivermectin, now has blurred vision.

01:01:46.980 | Five, patient taking ivermectin prophylaxis, now has nausea and vomiting.

01:01:51.780 | Wife is COVID positive.

01:01:53.420 | Six, patient with COVID pneumonia, O2 sats dropping, has been taking ivermectin for the

01:01:58.260 | past two days, 17,000 UGKG total dose.

01:02:01.700 | Seven, took ivermectin as COVID prophylaxis, unknown amount ivermectin ingested.

01:02:06.340 | Currently has GI, upset, vomiting, also drowsy.

01:02:09.180 | Eight, family member told patient to take horse ivermectin over a few days for COVID

01:02:13.060 | prophylaxis, took all at once in error.

01:02:15.900 | Has nausea, dizzy, floaters in eyes.

01:02:17.820 | Nine, patient COVID positive, family doc prescribed ivermectin, now low blood pressure and saturations,

01:02:23.540 | dehydrated, DX equals COVID, pneumonia.

01:02:26.460 | The bottom line from the available, reliable, well-done scientific data is that ivermectin

01:02:30.580 | does not work for COVID-19.

01:02:32.780 | Reputable scientific groups from around the world have concluded this.

01:02:36.540 | End of tweet thread.

01:02:38.140 | So here are nine responses.

01:02:41.700 | Now here's my question for you, think carefully.

01:02:44.060 | What do these nine stories tell you about the safety and efficacy of ivermectin?

01:02:57.100 | The answer is exactly nothing.

01:03:00.200 | Exactly nothing.

01:03:01.200 | Why?

01:03:02.200 | Well, these are anecdotal reports of calls from a poison center and we don't know anything

01:03:11.000 | about any other ongoing factors.

01:03:16.460 | For example, when I drink too much coffee, I get dizzy and feel weird.

01:03:20.340 | So it could be that taking ivermectin horse paste causes someone to feel weird in the

01:03:27.100 | head and have tightness in the ears.

01:03:28.500 | It could also be that someone took ivermectin horse paste and a lot of coffee like I have

01:03:31.780 | done, not meaning not the coffee, not the horse paste.

01:03:35.980 | And so you look at it and you say, okay, well, what do I do?

01:03:40.780 | The answer is it doesn't tell you anything.

01:03:42.440 | Now contrast that with another anecdote.

01:03:45.760 | This is from a personal friend of mine.

01:03:47.460 | I will read you this anecdote the way that this particular guy wrote it because I think

01:03:52.580 | it is interesting.

01:03:54.140 | So this guy was, he and his wife both had COVID.

01:03:58.180 | His wife was in an extremely serious case of COVID, was in the hospital for weeks and

01:04:04.820 | was at death's door.

01:04:06.560 | And somebody asked him, what made the answer?

01:04:10.220 | What saved your wife's life?

01:04:11.340 | Now from this guy's answer, I'll just read it to you.

01:04:13.740 | He says, the answer, a host of anti-inflammatory supplements, the three amino acids which prompt

01:04:19.980 | intracellular growth of glutathione, which COVID strips from your cells, hyperbaric chamber,

01:04:26.900 | quercetin, NAC, and ivermectin, all of which have a high degree of healing at very low

01:04:32.820 | cost and if recognized by the CDC and the FDA would then gut the legal foundation for

01:04:38.620 | the EUA that allows these vaccines, blah, blah, blah.

01:04:41.980 | Last October, my wife was in a full-blown cytokine storm.

01:04:45.300 | Our doctor later told us that every one of his patients that went into such a storm died,

01:04:50.500 | except for my wife.

01:04:52.580 | The difference, humanly speaking, our son-in-law had put together a regimen of anti-inflammatory

01:04:58.100 | supplements that were smuggled into the hospital and topically applied to her by our daughters.

01:05:04.580 | I was on another floor of the hospital with COVID myself.

01:05:07.900 | I continued these applications after I recovered.

01:05:11.140 | One side effect of these supplements for my wife, after losing most of her hair due to

01:05:15.340 | COVID, it has grown back fuller than before and with a natural curl that her mother hasn't

01:05:20.380 | seen since she was two years old.

01:05:22.860 | A friend recently complimented her on her beautiful perm and was stunned to learn it

01:05:26.940 | wasn't.

01:05:27.940 | We are taking many of these supplements prophylactically now.

01:05:31.340 | And he continues.

01:05:32.340 | He says, "I lost my father-in-law and nearly lost my wife due to COVID.

01:05:38.180 | What enrages me is that when our doctor prescribed NAC and healed a woman from COVID-19 and she

01:05:43.740 | was discharged from the hospital two days later, the medical corporation fired him.

01:05:48.540 | Worse, no one prescribed ivermectin to my father-in-law nor my wife.

01:05:53.020 | There are far more effective and low-cost therapies that have very high efficacy rates

01:05:56.620 | that the medical system and the government are refusing to acknowledge nor promote."

01:06:02.940 | Now what should you take from that?

01:06:06.380 | This is an absolute anecdote.

01:06:08.140 | It's an anecdote.

01:06:10.940 | Now here's my question.

01:06:13.140 | Are anecdotes wrong?

01:06:15.900 | Well, if we assume the truthfulness of the anecdote, an anecdote is not wrong.

01:06:22.300 | An anecdote can be very, very useful.

01:06:24.900 | And in your life, you have made many, many decisions based upon anecdotes.

01:06:31.220 | You've had a friend of yours who was successful and said to you, "You should go to college."

01:06:36.540 | So you went to college.

01:06:38.260 | Or you had someone that said, "You would like this country," and you went to the country.

01:06:41.300 | I mean, I don't want to give...

01:06:43.700 | The examples are so mundane.

01:06:45.580 | And you've had lots of anecdotes and you've taken action off of those anecdotes and have

01:06:49.860 | benefited from them.

01:06:51.740 | But those anecdotes are not proof.

01:06:54.580 | Those anecdotes are potentially evidence, but they need to be carefully understood.

01:06:59.220 | And you need to analyze and say, "What's actually happening here?"

01:07:04.360 | But you will deal with those anecdotes differently at different times of your life.

01:07:09.260 | Now again, I do not know whether or not ivermectin is a useful treatment for COVID.

01:07:21.180 | I don't know.

01:07:23.220 | I have read some of the analyses.

01:07:26.780 | I have read many of the articles.

01:07:29.460 | And it is my current opinion that there seems like there could be compelling evidence for

01:07:34.860 | its use in some way, possibly prophylactically, possibly later after the fact.

01:07:43.620 | There's some people studying, is ivermectin useful in treating some of the effects of

01:07:47.340 | long COVID, for those who've had bad results with coronavirus and significant ongoing thing,

01:07:53.100 | is there some way?

01:07:54.220 | And I've read some of the analysis as to why it might work.

01:07:57.620 | But what I have learned from the financial industry is to be very thoughtful about how

01:08:02.220 | I approach this information.

01:08:04.640 | So I do not know whether or not ivermectin works.

01:08:09.540 | But I will tell you this, I have access to ivermectin.

01:08:17.740 | And if I am diagnosed with COVID, I will immediately deeply research and think again about the data

01:08:26.100 | to try to figure out whether or not I should use it.

01:08:30.540 | And I am inclined to say that I probably would.

01:08:34.780 | Why?

01:08:36.500 | Well here's my first mental model, and this is the meat of what I want to talk to you

01:08:40.420 | about, the first mental model.

01:08:42.460 | My first mental model for virtually all decisions is play both sides if possible.

01:08:50.060 | Don't commit until necessary, play both sides until possible.

01:08:54.000 | So when I come up to a piece of data, an argument, a set of facts, a scenario, I always ask myself,

01:09:01.260 | not do I think this is true or not, but I ask myself first, what would I do if this

01:09:06.500 | were true?

01:09:08.820 | What would I do if this were true?

01:09:14.060 | And I think about what I would do if this were true.

01:09:17.220 | Then I ask myself, what would I do if this were not true?

01:09:23.220 | What would I do if this were not true?

01:09:25.980 | And like those lists.

01:09:27.760 | Then I consider the costs of both of those and ask myself if I can just simply act as

01:09:35.860 | if it were true and act as if it were not true and put the relevant things in place.

01:09:39.420 | So for example, you can go today to an online pharmacy, there are many of these available

01:09:46.700 | such as alldaychemist.com, and you can purchase for yourself 12 milligram tablets of Ivermectin

01:09:52.300 | for a current cost of, for 30 tablets is $57.50, right, they're $1.67 per tablet.

01:10:00.460 | You can also look and find out that the Indian government sent for their home kits, that

01:10:06.180 | they sent out a package, again, the actual numbers, they sent out paracetamol tablets,

01:10:11.580 | vitamin C tablets, multivitamin tablets with zinc, vitamin D tablets, and they sent out

01:10:15.980 | 12 milligram tablets of Ivermectin for a total of 10 tablets and they gave the appropriate

01:10:21.940 | use protocol.

01:10:23.220 | And so you could purchase 10 milligram tablets, sorry, 10, 12 milligram tablets of Ivermectin

01:10:28.060 | and you could put those in a box and you could create for yourself your own kit with regards

01:10:33.340 | to like the Indian government in one of the states sent out to about 200 million people

01:10:39.700 | living in that state that seemed to possibly have had a good timing result with the decline

01:10:47.700 | of the case.

01:10:48.700 | And you could buy those and you could put them in your cabinet in case somebody was

01:10:52.300 | associated with, in case somebody was diagnosed with coronavirus.

01:10:59.140 | Now does that mean that those things are effective or not effective?

01:11:03.660 | The answer is you don't need to know.

01:11:05.420 | And so what I look at as I say, is Ivermectin effective?

01:11:08.140 | I say, what would I do if it were true?

01:11:10.340 | The answer is I would buy some and I would have some and I would put together my own

01:11:14.020 | kit if it were true.

01:11:15.020 | And I asked myself, what's the cost of doing that?

01:11:17.820 | $50.

01:11:18.820 | What would I do if this were not true?

01:11:21.700 | Well, what I would do if this were not true is I would not take this drug that's a parasite,

01:11:26.660 | an anti-parasite drug.

01:11:27.780 | I would not take it for an unapproved use of the FDA and I would put it aside.

01:11:31.980 | What would I do if it were true?

01:11:32.980 | I would take the drug.

01:11:33.980 | What would I do if it were not true?

01:11:36.140 | I would not take the drug.

01:11:37.580 | And then you can go down and you can say, well, what are the side effects?

01:11:39.880 | Are there side effects of taking the 12 milligram tablets of Ivermectin?

01:11:43.640 | You should research that.

01:11:44.940 | And there's good data to understand about that.

01:11:47.640 | So what I would first do is I would say, I'm going to play both sides.

01:11:50.500 | I'm going to accumulate the things that I would need because after all, if this is true,

01:11:54.420 | this drug might go into shortfall, et cetera.

01:11:57.020 | And you can do this systematically with all of the things that you hear about.

01:12:00.020 | For example, you might hear anecdotally that, hey, so-and-so prescribed NAC.

01:12:04.980 | And all of a sudden people are buying NAC and then magically NAC is banned from Amazon.

01:12:09.260 | Huh.

01:12:10.260 | That's strange.

01:12:11.860 | And you might decide that people are completely wrong and completely crazy.

01:12:14.900 | But what will happen is that you will be completely out of luck if it turns out that those people

01:12:19.180 | are right.

01:12:21.100 | And so if you play both sides of the argument and you prepare yourself and you buy something

01:12:26.780 | and you have something, you have the ability to benefit.

01:12:29.540 | Now let's go to financial world.

01:12:32.420 | Ask you a question.

01:12:34.860 | Is Bitcoin a good investment?

01:12:39.180 | Think about that.

01:12:40.180 | Is Bitcoin a good investment?

01:12:46.060 | Answer should be, I'm not so sure.

01:12:48.500 | Right.

01:12:49.500 | I'm not so sure.

01:12:51.660 | But there is absolutely nothing that has outperformed Bitcoin in the last decade.

01:12:56.440 | And while I don't know what the long-term future holds, I don't know what will be the

01:12:59.320 | verdict of history, it's pretty remarkable these anecdotal results that we've received

01:13:04.100 | of Bitcoin and how it's growing and growing and how there's lots of smart, intelligent,

01:13:07.980 | good business people that are changing their tune and getting into it.

01:13:12.060 | And so how could you have played Bitcoin from the very beginning?

01:13:15.460 | Well you could have said, I'm going to wait for the data to be in, all of the data to

01:13:18.900 | be in.

01:13:19.900 | You could have said, like I did for many years, yeah, you know what, a lot of questions with

01:13:24.500 | it, it would harm my self-image if I were associated with that because I'm a financial

01:13:27.540 | advisor and after all financial advisors, you know, we don't want to get involved with

01:13:30.700 | those speculative things and after all I can't make any money selling Bitcoin so why would

01:13:34.260 | I spend any time reading about it?

01:13:35.960 | You might warn people against it and you might turn around and recognize later, you know

01:13:39.160 | what, it would have been easier if I just bought a Bitcoin.

01:13:43.240 | There is not a single one of us who, if we had just gone and dumped a little bit of money

01:13:48.280 | into Bitcoin when we first heard about it, would not be very, very wealthy today and

01:13:54.480 | thankfully many of my listeners did that and are.

01:13:59.000 | Now meanwhile the entire financial industry, sorry, I almost said medical industry, the

01:14:03.120 | entire financial industry has ignored it and has dismissed it.

01:14:08.400 | The US Federal Trade Commission, who is that, Consumer Protection Agency, the CPB, right,

01:14:15.160 | the Consumer Protection Board hasn't come out and said, yes, you definitely should protect

01:14:18.920 | yourself against Bitcoin.

01:14:20.320 | You had to be an early adopter to go out and get it.

01:14:23.080 | So what would have been the risk of playing Bitcoin?

01:14:26.120 | How could you have played both sides?

01:14:27.560 | Well you could have said, what would I do if this is true?

01:14:30.000 | What's the cost of doing that?

01:14:31.400 | So if you thought fundamentally that Bitcoin or whatever the next thing is, gold coins

01:14:36.040 | or whatever, you could have said, what's the cost of doing that and what would I do if

01:14:38.800 | this were not true?

01:14:39.800 | What's the cost of not doing it?

01:14:41.160 | And I think if you do that, you realize that you can do things for low costs and the potential

01:14:45.520 | impact of those things, the loss of those things is not that big of a deal as long as

01:14:50.000 | you're thoughtful about doing it.

01:14:51.840 | So by definition, I think it's crazy not to have at this point in time, given the anecdotal

01:14:57.200 | evidence that is being studied in a more rigorous way, I think it's crazy not to spend 50 bucks

01:15:03.160 | on a drug that might do something and then not have it available and then you make your

01:15:11.160 | decision when you need to.

01:15:12.160 | That's going to be the next thing, right?

01:15:13.280 | So you play both sides in your game and you say, what would I do if this were true?

01:15:18.080 | What would I do if this were not true?

01:15:19.280 | And if the price of actually acting as if it were true is relatively low, then just

01:15:25.400 | simply do it, right?

01:15:28.040 | Do it.

01:15:29.080 | Go out and try it.

01:15:30.980 | If you can handle the downside of the price, go and do it.

01:15:34.120 | I can spend 50 bucks on an unproven drug and at least I would know that I've got 12 milligram

01:15:39.600 | tablets rather than horse paste.

01:15:41.360 | I can easily spend 50 bucks and never notice it and you can too.

01:15:45.280 | And then if a couple months from now it turns out that it's true, then hey, at least I've

01:15:50.480 | got my own supply of this stuff.

01:15:51.800 | If it turns out in a couple of months from now that it's not true and the data indicates

01:15:55.920 | that it's not true, oh, no big deal.

01:15:57.960 | I wasted 50 bucks.

01:15:58.960 | I'll put it aside and maybe at some point my dog will get worms and I'll ask my veterinarian

01:16:02.920 | if I can just give him my human pills instead of whatever paste, you know, I'll give it

01:16:07.960 | someone with a horse and say, stick this in your horse's gullet and then make use of the

01:16:10.960 | drug.

01:16:12.560 | It's not that big of a deal is the point.

01:16:14.960 | And so what happens is people get so emotionally invested into issues and like, I've got to

01:16:19.240 | prove myself to be right and I'm telling you, this is simply pride and there's no need for

01:16:24.760 | it.

01:16:25.960 | This is what I did with Bitcoin and I talked about in that episode where I'd explained,

01:16:30.200 | right?

01:16:31.200 | I was so proud about being right that I didn't simply take simple action that would have

01:16:36.760 | resulted in my being rich.

01:16:40.160 | And at the end of the day, you come back and you say, well, would I rather have been right

01:16:44.400 | or rich?

01:16:45.920 | And then what happens is you go on again and again down this path and you're like, I'm

01:16:49.560 | going to be right.

01:16:50.560 | I'm going to prove them all right.

01:16:51.560 | I'm convinced that hydroxychloroquine is the answer to all of our ills or I'm convinced

01:16:55.480 | that hydroxychloroquine is a scam.

01:16:56.840 | And in the end, it doesn't matter.

01:16:59.720 | If I had gotten COVID back then and I was dying, I would be happy for them to try all

01:17:04.440 | kinds of experimental drugs.

01:17:05.920 | I'm fine, right?

01:17:06.920 | It's like if you're given a, if I'm given a diagnosis and the doctor says it's terminal,

01:17:12.000 | then I'm going to go and I'm going to collect every possible option that I can.

01:17:16.320 | I'm going to think about whether or not I should do the proposed treatment.

01:17:19.800 | I'm going to think about every alternative treatment.

01:17:21.400 | I'm probably going to do all of the above.

01:17:24.440 | And who knows what works, but all I care about is the results.

01:17:27.080 | But you spend so much time trying to be right, trying to say, I got this figured out.

01:17:30.960 | And the only people that need to worry about it are the actual researchers.

01:17:34.920 | Let the researchers do their job.

01:17:36.920 | Let those people work their way through it.

01:17:39.220 | Letting you focus on just simply doing what's useful.

01:17:42.680 | Don't worry about being right.

01:17:44.280 | Worry about being rich.

01:17:45.880 | Don't worry about being right about ivermectin.

01:17:48.240 | Worry about beating COVID and have a closet full of all the stuff.

01:17:52.720 | And that's where, like when the COVID treatments, is there any downside to doing vitamin, to

01:17:56.520 | taking excess vitamin D?

01:17:58.080 | As long as you're following a reasonable suggestion, the answer is no.

01:18:01.560 | It's my understanding that many people are highly deficient in vitamin D and that could

01:18:04.920 | potentially be a problem in many cases.

01:18:07.320 | So going to Costco and grabbing a bottle of vitamin D and popping a couple of capsules

01:18:11.680 | in your mouth is just cheap insurance with virtually no downside.

01:18:15.780 | Most vitamins, there's just no downside, even to megadoses.

01:18:19.380 | Not medical advice, check with your doctor.

01:18:20.960 | Some people have differentiating equations.

01:18:23.020 | But there's just no, right, taking some extra vitamin C and vitamin D, et cetera, and going

01:18:28.540 | outside and getting sunshine and running and all that stuff.

01:18:31.980 | There's no downside.

01:18:32.980 | And yet that has a big potential upside.

01:18:35.980 | So the mental model is play both sides when possible.

01:18:38.620 | And you can do this on the small level and you can do this on the macro level.

01:18:43.020 | One example I use a lot of times is with a question of global warming.

01:18:47.220 | Sorry, human-caused climate change.

01:18:49.700 | And I always ask people the question, are you absolutely sure that your opinion on global

01:18:56.060 | warming is absolutely correct?

01:18:59.500 | I cannot understand how anybody would answer that question in an absolute yes.

01:19:05.840 | When you understand the variables and the underlying data, when you understand all of

01:19:11.740 | the underlying arguments and you understand how new these models are and all of the garbage

01:19:17.820 | that could potentially be going in, that could potentially be creating garbage out, it's

01:19:22.220 | so difficult for me to believe that anybody could be with absolute certainty on the question

01:19:27.100 | on either side of it.

01:19:29.940 | My answer is simpler.

01:19:31.040 | I look at it and I say, what would I do if I were absolutely convinced that the earth

01:19:36.480 | was rising at potentially a catastrophic rate?

01:19:40.140 | What would I do?

01:19:41.140 | Then I ask myself, what would I do if I weren't convinced of it?

01:19:45.080 | And I make a list of those things.

01:19:47.300 | And then all the things that I can do that I think would protect me in that scenario,

01:19:51.540 | I do.

01:19:52.540 | All the things that I don't do, that I'm not willing to do, too high of a price, I put

01:19:56.900 | it aside and I come back to it later when the evidence is clearer.

01:20:01.180 | So you know, give me an example, just a practical example.

01:20:06.300 | I'm trying again to use non-medical.

01:20:07.300 | Because to me, I think that if you see this, it makes your decision simpler.

01:20:11.260 | What would I do if I were convinced that sea levels were rising dramatically and there

01:20:16.220 | was a potential for massive floods?

01:20:19.020 | Well, the first thing I would do is I would want to have access to be able to live in

01:20:22.700 | a place where that's not a problem.

01:20:24.820 | Now, being a US citizen, I have easy access to many places that would benefit from a few

01:20:32.020 | degree increase in the global climate temperatures.

01:20:35.580 | So I can say, well, maybe I should buy a little house in Maine, or at least have the ability

01:20:40.140 | to go buy a house in Maine later.

01:20:44.940 | So the first thing is done there.

01:20:46.740 | What would I do?

01:20:47.740 | Well, I'd be happy to recycle, be happy to drive less if that makes a difference.

01:20:51.860 | I might not be willing to fly less, like I'm not, but I might be willing to make greener

01:20:56.940 | decisions to the point where they are happy.

01:20:59.260 | We all have a list that we might be able to and willing to do.

01:21:02.940 | Well, what am I not willing to do?

01:21:04.900 | I'm not willing to not live in Florida at the moment because of the potential for rising

01:21:09.340 | sea temperatures.

01:21:10.500 | So I make that decision, and let me come back in a few years.

01:21:13.460 | Let me give a couple of years, see what happens in the meantime.

01:21:16.540 | I don't have to make the big decisions that the leader of a country has to make, you know,

01:21:20.780 | or the president of some international council.

01:21:23.860 | They got a much more difficult job than I do.

01:21:25.700 | I don't have to be convinced one way or the other.

01:21:27.620 | I don't have to make this my cause that I'm going to save the world from climate change.

01:21:32.340 | I just say, what would I do if this were true?

01:21:34.780 | What's the cost of doing that?

01:21:35.780 | Am I willing to do it?

01:21:36.780 | What would I do if this were not true?

01:21:38.140 | What's the cost of doing that?

01:21:39.140 | Am I willing to do that?

01:21:40.700 | And then make the adjustment.

01:21:42.540 | Then come back in the future.

01:21:44.500 | So prepare in advance is the step.

01:21:47.420 | Prepare in advance, take the actions if possible, and then research and analyze when action

01:21:52.300 | is needed.

01:21:54.300 | So back to my little ivermectin thing.

01:21:56.380 | I told you you can get ivermectin.

01:21:58.300 | You can get vitamin D, you can get vitamin C, you can get paracetamol, you can get doxycycline.

01:22:03.200 | So maybe you put together a little kit like the Indian government sent out that anecdotally

01:22:07.500 | seemed like it may have been one of the factors that aligned with this decrease in COVID severity

01:22:13.260 | and decrease in hospitalizations, a massive decrease in it.

01:22:15.860 | But we don't know.

01:22:16.860 | What would I not do?

01:22:17.860 | Well, I wouldn't take it unless I needed to and more evidence emerged.

01:22:22.980 | And I would research that and analyze it afresh when action is needed.

01:22:28.340 | Let's use hydroxychloroquine because that's less current.

01:22:31.120 | Maybe you went out and you bought yourself hydroxychloroquine and you stuck it in your

01:22:35.220 | cabinet.

01:22:36.660 | Then I would come up to it and you would say, "Hey, I'm sick.

01:22:39.660 | I've got a COVID diagnosis.

01:22:41.180 | Should I take this stuff?"

01:22:43.420 | Well that's when you research it.

01:22:44.740 | And then you say, "What's the latest data?

01:22:48.220 | What's the analysis?

01:22:49.220 | Let me look at the papers, try to get an idea of it.

01:22:51.620 | Talk to some knowledgeable professionals."

01:22:53.340 | That's when you make your decision is when you actually have to make a decision.

01:22:57.380 | Now taking it prophylactically is different.

01:23:00.280 | But when you're researching it, that's when you do a self-assessment, right?

01:23:03.340 | What are the risk factors?

01:23:04.660 | What are the risk factors of my taking this?

01:23:06.540 | What are the risk factors of my not taking it?

01:23:09.100 | There are people right now dying every day who have been fully doubly vaccinated, but

01:23:15.860 | they're dying.

01:23:18.340 | Far fewer than if they weren't doubly vaccinated, but they are happening.

01:23:24.100 | So the risk is not zero.

01:23:26.340 | And so then you look and you say, "Am I willing to take this drug?"

01:23:28.620 | It's kind of how I am with even simple things, right?

01:23:31.260 | I don't like to take painkillers.

01:23:32.740 | I don't want to do it.

01:23:33.740 | I don't want extra drugs in my body.

01:23:35.980 | But the risk of my taking a painkiller is pretty low if I really need it.

01:23:40.420 | And so I'm just going to take it.

01:23:42.740 | It's not that big a deal.

01:23:43.740 | So I hope I'm not oversimplifying it.

01:23:45.620 | The point is that prepare in advance, play both sides, and then only research and analyze

01:23:51.740 | and commit using the best available data when it's actually necessary for you to do so.

01:24:00.820 | That's my play both sides mental model.

01:24:02.220 | I hope you find it useful.

01:24:03.860 | What I have found is that every time I've done it, I've just gone out and bought something.

01:24:09.180 | Gone out and bought a whole life insurance policy, bought a stock, bought a mutual fund,

01:24:13.780 | opened an IRA, bought Bitcoin, bought an NFT.

01:24:20.780 | Every time I do this, I wind up putting myself in a situation where I'm more knowledgeable

01:24:25.340 | from the process.

01:24:26.840 | And so instead of sitting back and crossing my arms and trying to be right, I get involved

01:24:31.500 | and I actually learn what's happening based upon actually doing it.

01:24:36.900 | Based upon actually doing it.

01:24:38.700 | Next.

01:24:39.700 | What's the next one?

01:24:42.340 | Consider the sources of your information very, very carefully.

01:24:48.740 | Let's assume that nobody has ulterior motives.

01:24:53.380 | Let's assume that everyone has the best of intentions, the best of motives.

01:24:58.020 | Your doctor has the best of intentions, your financial advisor has the best of intentions,

01:25:02.620 | the best of motives all across the board.

01:25:04.820 | Nobody is trying to swindle you.

01:25:06.140 | Nobody is trying to do anything wrong.

01:25:07.420 | Assume the best.

01:25:09.820 | The average professional practitioner has exactly zero involvement with any actual cutting

01:25:18.420 | edge research.

01:25:21.500 | When I was a financial advisor, a highly credentialed, fully licensed financial advisor, making my

01:25:27.860 | living, giving financial advice, I had no involvement whatsoever with any cutting edge

01:25:37.860 | research and I was no more qualified to comment on it than any other layperson.

01:25:45.980 | Why?

01:25:47.500 | Well because we all have a certain business model.

01:25:50.340 | When I was a financial advisor, my business model was simple.

01:25:53.460 | Sell insurance, sell investments, manage money, do financial plans.

01:25:58.140 | That's what I did.

01:25:59.700 | Sell life insurance, sell disability insurance, sell long term care insurance.

01:26:02.740 | Prior to ACA I sold health insurance.

01:26:07.980 | Sell 529s, Roth IRAs, sell annuities, bring assets over, roll over 401ks, manage money,

01:26:15.660 | do financial plans, prospect for new customers.

01:26:18.020 | That was the business model.

01:26:19.020 | That was it.

01:26:21.540 | I had an interest in a lot of things, but I had no more qualifications than anybody

01:26:26.940 | else to actually say what the future was.

01:26:31.500 | I had a little bit more exposure and familiarity with the language, but I didn't have any more

01:26:36.260 | qualifications to actually sit down and read a study, to read a white paper on Bitcoin.

01:26:43.420 | And so for years I gave the same basic advice.

01:26:45.580 | What was it?

01:26:46.580 | It was a repeating of advice that sounded good to me.

01:26:51.220 | It was a repeating of, "Hey, this makes sense to me and so let me share this with other

01:26:55.380 | people."

01:26:57.100 | Now I was well-intentioned.

01:26:58.500 | I was honest.

01:27:01.300 | And at least with regard to the example I'm using here with Bitcoin, I was profoundly

01:27:05.300 | wrong.

01:27:07.700 | Profoundly wrong.

01:27:10.620 | Now compare that to any other area of your life.

01:27:15.900 | Your average health professional probably, with the exception of personal interests,

01:27:23.580 | probably is just simply not qualified to answer any of these questions.

01:27:27.540 | Here's my example of what I would ask a medical professional.

01:27:34.260 | And I think this is a reasonable question.

01:27:38.740 | What can I do?

01:27:39.980 | In addition to getting vaccinated, in addition to washing my hands, in addition to wearing

01:27:47.580 | a mask, okay, let's just grant all those.

01:27:50.780 | What can I do to improve my experience with COVID so that if and when I get COVID I have

01:27:58.980 | an easier time of it?

01:28:02.580 | I think a question like that should reveal a lot about someone.

01:28:09.020 | By the way, there's lots of financial versions of this that you can ask a financial advisor.

01:28:12.700 | To your financial advisor, let's assume that I wanted to get 15% per year every year.

01:28:19.100 | How could I do that?

01:28:23.100 | If a financial advisor doesn't have an answer to that, they're not in the game.

01:28:28.580 | They're not in the game.

01:28:30.100 | And you accept it.

01:28:32.580 | So this is one of my major issues with watching the health stuff is that what advice have

01:28:38.780 | you received from the US CDC, the people that are paid to deliver this stuff, what advice

01:28:44.300 | have you received from the US CDC to help, possibly help, improve your experience with

01:28:51.540 | coronavirus?

01:28:52.540 | Well, you're told wear a mask, but first you were told don't wear a mask, then you were

01:28:57.420 | told do wear a mask, then don't wear a mask, then do wear a mask.

01:29:02.860 | And then when you dig into that, well, they lied to you again and again and again and

01:29:06.740 | again.

01:29:07.740 | Okay, so let's set aside the mask thing.

01:29:09.580 | Wash your hands.

01:29:10.580 | Okay, I'll wash my hands.

01:29:14.380 | Get a vaccine.

01:29:15.820 | Okay.

01:29:17.060 | What else can I do?

01:29:19.540 | The US medical system is utterly incompetent at helping people build good health.

01:29:26.780 | Now, there are exceptions, sure, but on the whole, the system is absolutely failing people.

01:29:32.140 | I don't understand.

01:29:33.500 | Maybe I'm ignorant.

01:29:34.500 | I wholeheartedly concede that that might be the case, but I'm not aware of the US medical

01:29:42.020 | establishment coming out and saying, "Hey, you probably should make sure that you check

01:29:45.740 | your vitamin D levels."

01:29:48.180 | That seems like the very most basic thing that is not that controversial, and yet they

01:29:53.660 | don't do it.

01:29:54.660 | Why not?

01:29:55.660 | Well, there could be various reasons, right?

01:29:57.100 | You can go hardcore conspiracy.

01:29:58.100 | You could say, "Well, then maybe there's not enough data."

01:30:00.620 | But what's the harm of your taking vitamin D?

01:30:03.860 | Having some zinc supplementation.

01:30:06.060 | What's the harm of trying ivermectin?

01:30:07.540 | Now, they can't do it, and that's the point, right?

01:30:09.300 | They can't be involved in cutting-edge stuff.

01:30:12.020 | The US financial system and the financial advice system, on the whole, is utterly incompetent

01:30:16.060 | at helping people build wealth.

01:30:17.260 | They don't know how to do it.

01:30:19.260 | They don't have a clue.

01:30:21.860 | Your average financial advisor does not have an answer of how to build wealth other than

01:30:28.180 | save some money, lower your taxes, and buy mutual funds.

01:30:32.740 | That's it.

01:30:34.020 | Why?

01:30:35.020 | Well, because that's what they have been trained by, and that's what they see.

01:30:38.220 | That's the world of opportunity, and everything is put through that lens.

01:30:42.260 | You have to go to a different world if you want different advice.

01:30:47.820 | Understand how the game is rigged.

01:30:50.100 | Understand who controls the game, and consider your sources very, very carefully.

01:30:57.180 | Understand where you can go for the best information, or at least the best examples.

01:31:02.420 | One of the reasons I started Radical Personal Finance was I came to realize that, as a financial

01:31:07.300 | advisor, I wasn't very good at helping people get wealthy.

01:31:11.180 | I was good at helping wealthy people stay wealthy.

01:31:13.420 | I was good at helping people save some money, but I wasn't good at helping people get wealthy.

01:31:17.700 | Where can you go for information on actually how to get wealthy?

01:31:20.780 | You often find it, paradoxically, in the anecdotes.

01:31:24.400 | You go to a billionaire, and you say, "How did this billionaire become a billionaire?"

01:31:28.380 | You go to somebody who's deeply in debt, and who gets out of debt, and you say, "How did

01:31:31.820 | this guy get from deeply out of debt to becoming debt-free?"

01:31:36.160 | Over the years, I've found that those things are far more helpful than the mainstream advice.

01:31:42.300 | The mainstream, by way of analogy, what's the mainstream advice?

01:31:45.380 | Well, the mainstream advice in financial planning is pay your bills on time, put money in your

01:31:50.380 | 401(k) and your IRA, and buy life insurance.

01:31:56.540 | Is there anything wrong with that?

01:31:57.540 | No, it's not.

01:31:58.540 | But does that get people unstuck?

01:32:00.140 | Does that get people out of debt?

01:32:01.460 | No.

01:32:02.460 | So where do you see results?

01:32:03.460 | Well, you could go to Dave Ramsey, right?

01:32:05.500 | "Hardcore!

01:32:06.500 | Go hardcore and get out of debt."

01:32:07.500 | Well, we're getting results here.

01:32:09.220 | But Dave says things that are clearly wrong, right?

01:32:12.180 | Dave says, "Ignore the interest rates on your debt and pay them off from smallest to largest."

01:32:17.900 | Clearly wrong.

01:32:18.900 | Except Dave has helped more people pay off debt than any other human alive.

01:32:24.940 | I can't back the state up.

01:32:27.140 | I can't prove that, but it's a lot, right?

01:32:29.860 | So you say, "Well, it's clearly wrong, but it clearly works."

01:32:34.900 | And so many times I've heard this advice, right?

01:32:37.780 | You sit and you talk with anybody who understands math and you say, "Yeah, you got to pay off

01:32:41.220 | your highest interest rate debt first."

01:32:43.900 | And yet Dave, with paying off lowest amount first, has helped more people pay off debt

01:32:50.300 | than I think anybody else alive.

01:32:53.860 | Or you say, "Well, what else can you do?"

01:32:55.660 | And you find some guy who gets out of debt by—this is a guy I had on the show years

01:32:58.940 | ago—by flipping washing machines on Craigslist.

01:33:01.980 | That's amazing!

01:33:02.980 | And you start to see, look, you too can flip washing machines on Craigslist.

01:33:08.060 | And so these stories are often very good.

01:33:10.140 | So go into the health space, right?

01:33:13.080 | Who are the people who are really useful?

01:33:14.940 | Well, the 500-pound guy who turns into the 170-pound guy.

01:33:19.260 | He often can teach more than the doctor who's 30 pounds overweight.

01:33:24.420 | Or the guy who had all kinds of debilitating issues and Crohn's disease and this autoimmune

01:33:29.220 | thing and that problem and says, "Look, I did all this stuff and now it's all in the

01:33:33.180 | background."

01:33:34.180 | Now, can the medical guys prove it?

01:33:37.420 | Often not.

01:33:38.860 | Or they're still arguing about what goes with it.

01:33:40.700 | But then somebody will hear it and they'll say, "I tried it and look, it fixed my problems

01:33:44.280 | too."

01:33:46.000 | So I wouldn't say, "Here, the filters are important."

01:33:48.520 | Does that prove that this is the case?

01:33:50.520 | No, it doesn't, right?

01:33:51.520 | There's no substitute for good double-blind study, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:33:55.000 | There's no substitute for that.

01:33:57.100 | But a lot of times that stuff takes too long.

01:34:00.660 | It takes too long for that to develop and you need answers.

01:34:04.540 | So if I'm sick in the hospital with COVID and I'm in a cytokine storm, I hope that people

01:34:09.320 | will come in and rub whatever those things were on my body in addition to everything,

01:34:13.800 | all the other treatments that I'm getting because I'll try anything if it'll help me.

01:34:19.080 | And here's what I've noticed about radical personal finance listeners.

01:34:22.560 | There's a big difference between those who listen to the show and those who listen to

01:34:25.560 | the show who take action.

01:34:27.000 | I routinely speak with consulting clients who say, "Yeah, you know, you did this show

01:34:30.680 | with so-and-so and I went and I bought his course and I did his thing and now I got rich."

01:34:36.680 | Or "You did the show about the thing and I went and researched it and I put all my money

01:34:39.800 | in it and look, I got rich and thank you."

01:34:42.280 | And I'm thinking, "Man, I didn't even do that, right?

01:34:45.760 | I didn't even go and take the course and do the thing and you did it and it worked."

01:34:51.340 | So if you understand the risks of certain things and you move yourself into a bias for

01:34:57.380 | action, I think that's the proper mindset to have.

01:35:02.200 | Study what you're doing.

01:35:03.200 | Don't be a fool, right?

01:35:04.320 | Don't pump a bottle of horse dewormer down your face.

01:35:09.840 | Understand the risks of what you're doing, but be the kind of person who doesn't just

01:35:13.600 | sit back and say, "I'm going to wait for everyone to agree."

01:35:16.760 | Because by the time everyone agrees, you're old and fat and dead, right?

01:35:21.800 | There are people who still think that eating a low-fat diet is the key to good health.

01:35:26.840 | Those people are also 75 years old and in terrible health because they've been eating

01:35:31.360 | a low-fat diet their entire life as that was the key to it.

01:35:35.000 | And when you look at like the medical stuff and you see how excruciatingly slow and how

01:35:38.320 | fundamentally wrong the opinion is, there's still people that think that eggs are unhealthy.

01:35:43.080 | There's people that believe that meat is bad for you, a lot of them.

01:35:48.020 | There's people that believe that chiropractic care is a scam.

01:35:51.920 | And what happens is these people live on the thrill of being right.

01:35:57.160 | They live on the thrill of it and they never admit they're wrong.

01:36:00.840 | They just love to be right.

01:36:02.640 | I have been one of them.

01:36:04.080 | That's how I recognize it.

01:36:07.280 | It doesn't serve you.

01:36:09.140 | Be the kind of person who takes action and who tries everything as long as the results

01:36:14.060 | are or as long as the risks are reasonable.

01:36:17.320 | All right, give me an example.

01:36:23.080 | Acupuncture.

01:36:24.360 | I personally think acupuncture is probably a scam.

01:36:28.760 | I've read all the debunking of the natural health stuff.

01:36:31.120 | I've read all the anti-chiropractic stuff.

01:36:33.560 | I've read all the stuff.

01:36:35.640 | I think it's probably a scam.

01:36:39.680 | Meaning acupuncture, not chiropractic care.

01:36:41.480 | I think chiropractic care is vital.

01:36:45.280 | Then my wife and I were expecting one of our children.

01:36:48.320 | The estimated due date was about three or four or five days in the rear.

01:36:52.880 | And as with all things, we said we're going to do anything possible that might possibly

01:36:57.400 | work.

01:36:58.480 | So what did we do?

01:37:00.280 | We ate spicy food.

01:37:02.520 | Do I think spicy food induces childbirth?

01:37:05.780 | Probably not.

01:37:06.780 | I think that's probably an old wives tale.

01:37:08.660 | Probably not.

01:37:09.660 | But there's no downside to eating lots of spicy food.

01:37:14.200 | We had lots of sex.

01:37:15.280 | Do I think sex induces childbirth?

01:37:17.520 | That makes sense that maybe so.

01:37:19.400 | But regardless, there's no downside, only upside.

01:37:22.580 | So let's do that.

01:37:24.800 | Go to chiropractic care.

01:37:26.840 | Do I think chiropractic care and a good adjustment by someone who's trained in those techniques

01:37:30.720 | for pregnant mothers and children, do I think that that is going to induce childbirth?

01:37:37.360 | Maybe.

01:37:38.600 | But we sort of tried it because there's no downside.

01:37:41.320 | And then with this particular child, we went and did acupuncture.

01:37:44.000 | Do I think acupuncture actually helps?

01:37:46.940 | I'm pretty skeptical.

01:37:48.960 | But we went ahead and did acupuncture.

01:37:51.000 | And a couple days later, maybe a day or two later, we had a baby.

01:37:55.040 | Now which of those things was the cause for the child coming when the baby came?

01:38:03.100 | Could potentially have been none of them.

01:38:05.360 | Just that her body had decided this is the appropriate gestational period for this particular

01:38:09.240 | child and it's time to have the baby.

01:38:11.400 | Or it could have been influenced by all those other things.

01:38:14.080 | And so you see the, hopefully you see the point.

01:38:16.600 | Any one of those could have been important.

01:38:18.340 | Maybe it was the whole thing.

01:38:19.640 | But if you're the kind of person who says, "Hey, downside risk of this is pretty low.

01:38:24.200 | Can we do it?"

01:38:25.320 | What happens is you get results and you can't prove why you got results.

01:38:30.560 | But a lot of time that anecdotal evidence, there's some real power in it.

01:38:36.180 | Make your own risk reward decisions with the best information you have at the time that

01:38:39.840 | you have to make those decisions.

01:38:43.640 | Stay current.

01:38:45.280 | Get the best current information when you actually need to make the decisions.

01:38:50.240 | That's when you go looking for the information.

01:38:52.320 | Just in time learning.

01:38:54.000 | Learning and saying, "Hey, you know what?

01:38:55.320 | I need to make this decision now.

01:38:57.120 | That's when I'm going to go and learn about it."

01:39:01.640 | Finally, understand that the past is not the present.

01:39:09.920 | Past is not the present.

01:39:10.920 | And the past does not determine the present or the future.

01:39:16.120 | What do I mean?

01:39:17.120 | A lot of times people make this fundamental error where they say, "Hey, this has happened

01:39:21.600 | in the past.

01:39:22.600 | This is the way things were in the past."

01:39:24.840 | And they extrapolate that automatically to the future and think that that's somehow an

01:39:27.960 | argument.

01:39:28.960 | And it's simply not.

01:39:31.760 | Think for example about what was the last war that the United States of America won?

01:39:38.640 | World War II.

01:39:39.640 | That was the last time that the United States of America won a war.

01:39:42.480 | You could argue, "Well, maybe Desert Storm.

01:39:44.600 | I don't count it as a war."

01:39:47.080 | For a variety of reasons, the United States no longer seems to declare a war.

01:39:51.000 | But you could say, "Okay, maybe they won the Desert Storm battle."

01:39:54.440 | But think the last time the United States won a war.

01:39:56.720 | World War II.

01:39:58.800 | Now since World War II, the United States of America has lived under this halo that

01:40:02.120 | we're the most mighty military empire on earth.

01:40:05.380 | Whatever we do, we win.

01:40:08.320 | We spend more money on a military than the next eight countries combined, or whatever

01:40:11.840 | the actual number is.

01:40:16.380 | Did that mean that the United States won the war in Afghanistan?

01:40:21.260 | No.

01:40:23.580 | Just like the Korean War and the Vietnam War and Desert Storm, sort of, kind of, and the

01:40:29.260 | war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan was soundly lost.

01:40:34.140 | So did the past determine the future?

01:40:37.700 | You can't make an argument, "Well, look, the United States won World War II, so therefore

01:40:40.660 | we win the next one."

01:40:41.660 | Why not?

01:40:42.660 | Because everything is its own situation.

01:40:44.980 | Now you can study the past and you can try to understand, what was it?

01:40:48.400 | Why did these things work?

01:40:51.300 | But you can't automatically predict the future based upon those.

01:40:56.120 | So what can you do?

01:40:57.300 | Well, recognize that the future is open.

01:40:59.300 | So for example, back in the financial space, the techniques and the tools that worked to

01:41:04.360 | build wealth during the 19th century didn't necessarily work in the 20th century.

01:41:10.200 | Some of them did, some of them didn't.

01:41:12.220 | The things that worked in the 20th century might or might not work in the 21st century.

01:41:17.540 | Some might work and some might not work.

01:41:21.740 | So you need to understand the past and be informed by it, but always keep your mind

01:41:26.780 | open to the fact that the future might be different.

01:41:30.960 | Up until coronavirus, the coronavirus vaccines, we'd had a famously difficult time creating

01:41:35.960 | vaccines for viruses, right?

01:41:38.960 | And so there are many people that said, "We'll never create a successful vaccine for the

01:41:41.780 | coronavirus, get over it."

01:41:43.720 | Were those people right?

01:41:45.220 | No, they were wrong.

01:41:48.200 | What made the difference?

01:41:49.200 | I don't know, but there was a difference.

01:41:52.920 | Now by extension, flip side of it, maybe taking a measles vaccine is a great idea.

01:42:00.920 | That doesn't automatically mean that taking a coronavirus vaccine is a great idea.

01:42:05.300 | You have to look at each thing by itself.

01:42:07.200 | And so what can you do as a person?

01:42:09.520 | I think the best mental model here is to say, "I'm going to be open.

01:42:12.520 | I'm going to be open to follow the data.

01:42:14.800 | I'm going to be open to listening to the anecdotes.

01:42:17.640 | I'm going to be open to thinking.

01:42:19.200 | I'm going to be informed by the past.

01:42:21.280 | I'm going to try to play both sides when I can, do what I'm capable of, and then just

01:42:27.080 | try to make the best decisions for me right now at the moment with the evidence that I

01:42:31.520 | have available."

01:42:34.080 | Things change.

01:42:35.080 | Data changes.

01:42:36.080 | The science changes.

01:42:37.320 | Things change.

01:42:38.520 | Stay current.

01:42:39.520 | I said final thing, and then I realized I forgot this last thing.

01:42:43.480 | Pay careful attention to who is talking to you and what their vested interests are.

01:42:48.520 | It's probably good to assume that a lot of people are lying to you when they prove themselves

01:42:51.520 | to have lied to you again and again and again.

01:42:54.880 | But stay current and think about it.

01:42:59.520 | When you see, think about what the interests are.

01:43:02.800 | For example, who is reporting the news to you and what interest do they have?

01:43:05.800 | Well, the people that are reporting the news to you have a product that they sell, and

01:43:11.880 | that product is eyeballs.

01:43:16.280 | So the way that they get eyeballs is controversy.

01:43:21.000 | Anything that can happen to bring eyeballs allows more ad revenue.

01:43:25.520 | Controversy sells.

01:43:26.520 | So that's where, when you think about the Ivermectin horse dewormer stuff, it's so stupid,

01:43:31.440 | right?

01:43:32.440 | I saw this comment on Twitter, not originally with me, but I love the saying.

01:43:36.440 | Calling Ivermectin horse dewormer is like calling water engine coolant.

01:43:43.200 | Sorry.

01:43:44.920 | Calling Ivermectin horse dewormer is like calling water engine coolant.

01:43:53.400 | Is water used for engine coolant?

01:43:55.160 | Absolutely.

01:43:56.160 | Is Ivermectin used for horse dewormer?

01:43:57.880 | Absolutely.

01:43:58.960 | But to say that somehow you're being honest in saying that Ivermectin is horse dewormer,

01:44:06.080 | and that's what Joe Rogan took, is absurd.

01:44:09.200 | Absolutely absurd.

01:44:10.720 | But yet, what happened?

01:44:13.160 | What happened yesterday, the last day or two, right?

01:44:16.080 | Dr. Sanjay Gupta went on Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan pressed him on this, and even just recently

01:44:21.760 | now Don Lemon is interviewing Sanjay Gupta and saying it's not a lie to say that Ivermectin

01:44:25.760 | is a horse dewormer.

01:44:26.760 | Right?

01:44:27.760 | It's not a lie.

01:44:28.760 | It's not a lie.

01:44:29.760 | It's not a lie about it.

01:44:30.920 | See through this stuff.

01:44:31.920 | Okay?

01:44:32.920 | Who is reporting the news to you?

01:44:33.920 | What interest do they have?

01:44:34.920 | Who's reporting the stuff to you?

01:44:36.680 | What interest do they have?

01:44:37.680 | And you have to learn to feed through it.

01:44:40.120 | In conclusion, we live in an information age.

01:44:42.280 | Okay?

01:44:43.280 | All of us are going to have to enhance our skills.

01:44:45.400 | When you fall for a hoax, study why you fell for it.

01:44:48.240 | We're all going to do it.

01:44:49.760 | Okay?

01:44:50.840 | It won't surprise me at all if six months from now we discover that, you know what,

01:44:55.560 | Ivermectin was totally useless and all of the indications that we had for its usefulness,

01:45:02.200 | potentially usefulness, yeah, it was wrong.

01:45:04.680 | It was totally useless.

01:45:07.360 | Maybe a year from now we'll say vitamin D was totally useless.

01:45:10.720 | Maybe so.

01:45:11.720 | Okay?

01:45:12.720 | I'm going to be okay with that.

01:45:14.200 | So ask yourself, why did I get it wrong?

01:45:16.680 | Now on the flip side, if you fell for a hoax like Ivermectin is not people medicine, or

01:45:21.760 | if you fell for a hoax like Ivermectin is horse dewormer, then ask yourself, why did

01:45:26.840 | I fall for a hoax?

01:45:29.160 | Why did I not understand that?

01:45:31.320 | Now what else?

01:45:32.320 | If you fell for a hoax like all you need to do is put money in your Roth IRA and you're

01:45:36.360 | going to be good, yeah, not going to work.

01:45:38.800 | Why did I fall for that?

01:45:40.560 | If you fell for a hoax like Bitcoin, you know, Bitcoin has no value, why did I fall for that?

01:45:48.960 | Gold coins are a waste of money, nobody should invest in gold, they should only buy stocks.

01:45:53.040 | Why?

01:45:54.040 | And I think if you'll develop this curious personality and test things, refrain from

01:45:58.240 | trying to be right all the time and just try things.

01:46:02.280 | Being right all the time is a very draining position to have to hold because you're arguing

01:46:06.720 | with everybody all the time.

01:46:09.560 | Be curious, be curious, be interested and be the kind of person willing to take action,

01:46:15.880 | not the kind of person just going around trying to be right.

01:46:19.000 | As a former Mr. Right, those are my thoughts.

01:46:21.920 | Thank you for listening.

01:46:22.960 | If you think I'm wrong about something, I would love to hear from you.

01:46:25.200 | Go to twitter.com/joshuasheets, follow me on Twitter and feel free to interact with

01:46:29.580 | me there, twitter.com/joshuasheets.

01:46:31.400 | If you would like to speak to me personally and get my perception or my insight or my

01:46:35.480 | input on a specific personal question that is not medically related, then I would love

01:46:41.600 | to have you do that.

01:46:42.600 | That's radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult, radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult.

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2021-10-16_DELETED_EPISODE_Ivermectin_Controversy_with_intro