Transcript

Episode 3087 - The Scott Adams School 02/04/26

From Real Coffee with Scott Adams · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 1 min · 11,012 words · 115 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Episode 3087 - The Scott Adams School 02/04/26", an episode of Real Coffee with Scott Adams published February 4, 2026 (1 h 1 min, about 11,012 words). It mentions 10 people, works and ideas, including Scott Adams, Joshua Lysa, Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success, NLP, The Structure of Magic.

What this episode is about

The main topic centers around a lively and interactive morning session led by Scott Adams, where he engages with a live audience, discusses new technology that allows for visual interaction, and invites participants to enjoy a "simultaneous sip" of their favorite beverage. Key highlights include camaraderie among viewers, playful banter, and an emphasis on the enjoyment of daily rituals like coffee drinking.

Key takeaways

  • Reframing isn't just a technique; it's a lens that transforms mundane into magnificent.
  • Hypnosis: the ultimate cheat code for life—enhancing productivity and habits without the struggle.
  • Coffee with Scott Adams: where every sip fuels your dopamine and intellect simultaneously.
  • The awkwardness of virtual introductions proves that technology can't replace human charm—or the occasional 'you're on mute.'
  • A $5 frame turns ocean art into nothing special; your mindset is the frame around your life experiences.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Joshua Lysa, Scott Adams, Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success, James Clear
  2. – 20:00: The Structure of Magic, Richard Bandler
  3. – 30:00: Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success
  4. – 40:00: Stanford, Scott Adams
  5. – 1:00:56: Scott Adams

Notable quotes from "Episode 3087 - The Scott Adams School 02/04/26"

  • I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day. The thing that makes everything better is cold. That's right. A simultaneous sip. Paul, where are you?
    about Cold Exposure · at
  • All. Sergio, we got Marcela. We got Owen. This is going to be a wonderful, fantastic time together. I am Joshua Lys, also known as Joshua Lysc. I'm the editor publisher for…
    about Joshua Lysa · at
  • Basically, if you are a different person, you get different results. Scott would always talk about the folly of trying to will yourself into habit change, habit transformation, and just how difficult that truly was. And.
    about Scott Adams · at
  • Know, let's let's try to build some let's try to build shall we say atomic habits in our life. The story of atomic habits and kind of wheeling dealing and allegedly stealing some of Scott's original ideas for that book.
    about James Clear · at
  • What the original reframing book teaches and it's called the structure of magic by bandler and grinder. They developed and sort of applied talk hypnosis model called neural…
    about NLP · at
  • And over the course of all of these hours upon hours of talk therapy sessions, he noticed that there were patterns in the words he was typing. The patterns were some people had…
    about Richard Bandler · at
  • We what Scott would always do is say the things that you want to be real like 15 times. That was his method taught in reframe your brain and elsewhere in his work. But really, it's the repetition.
    about Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success · at
  • Have gone viral when I posted it. Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they're disabled. The article was actually written by somebody who was one of those people. they…
    about Stanford · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Scott Adams — Person · Referenced host / central figure (namesake of show and school) · 4 mentions · first at
    The livestream is framed as 'Coffee with Scott Adams' and the 'Scott Adams School'; his ideas (reframing, affirmations, incentives) are repeatedly cited and he is memorialized at the end.
  • Joshua Lysa — Person · Main guest / instructor · 3 mentions · first at
    He delivers the core lesson ('Reframing 101'), explains hypnosis and identity change, and describes his work editing/publishing for Scott Adams and contributing to 'Reframe Your Brain.'
  • Richard Bandler — Person · Referenced expert (NLP co-founder) · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited as a key origin figure for reframing/NLP; Joshua says he met and trained with him and references Bandler & Grinder's work as foundational to reframing.
  • James Clear — Person · Referenced author (criticized) · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the credited author of 'Atomic Habits' while Joshua criticizes the book as repackaging Scott Adams' ideas; used to contrast identity-based change vs habit 'white-knuckling.'

Books & papers

  • Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success — Book · Primary recommendation · 2 mentions · first at
    Central book discussed by Joshua Lysa, teaching reframing techniques for personal development.
  • The Structure of Magic — Book · Referenced work · 4 mentions · first at
    Cited as foundational text for NLP and reframing techniques discussed in the episode.
    What the original reframing book teaches and it's called the structure of magic by bandler and grinder. They developed and sort of applied talk hypnosis model called neural…

Companies & orgs

  • Stanford — Company · Case study · 3 mentions · first at
    Mentioned in a discussion about disability accommodations and academic integrity.

Concepts & topics

  • NLP — Concept · Framework · 4 mentions
    Neural Linguistic Programming is discussed as a method for personal change and hypnosis.
  • Cold Exposure — Concept · Strategy · 1 mention · first at
    Briefly mentioned as a method for habit change and personal development.

Places & events

  • World War One — Event · Incidental mention · 2 mentions
    Mentioned humorously in a story about a medical incident.
    Zone, I think we can start with the story that some people requested we talk about. doctors found a live World War I artillery shell in a man's rectum in France.

Full transcript with timestamps

You probably Who's that? Lang. Hi, Bookish. Bookish. Slap it on a skillet. Always the early birds.

Good morning. Oh, you guys look good today. We can see you now. We have new technology. Shelley figured it out. You can see us and we can see you. I can see YouTube. Amazing.

And we can see you. [clears throat] Could you imagine? That would be rough. Good morning.

Yeah, Bob Lawler. Good morning, Beverly Beieber. Good morning, Gracie. I love you guys. All right. Are we filed in? Are we filed in? You can see who's joined us today. One of our favorite

EJ friends of the show, EJ. Stephen, I can see you, Stephen. You guys, it's like it's like romper room or I'm probably too old. You guys don't know what I'm talking about. Okay, so if you guys got the romper room reference, you're my people. Okay, you guys, how about we have a a little sip with our beloved Scott and we'll get going. Here we go.

We're going to have one heck of a time today. Yep. Just like always, let me get your comments working and then we'll fire it up. Best thing ever. Come on. Come on. Comes, you can do it. Technology is a little bit slow today, but there you go. Now we're all good. Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and it's the best thing that ever happened to you. But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience up to levels that nobody could even understand with their tiny shiny human brains.

Well, to do that, all you need is a copper mug or a glass attacker to Stein, a canteen jug or flask vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day. The thing that makes everything better is cold. That's right. A simultaneous sip. Paul, where are you? Ah, so good. All right,

that was our shout out to Paul Collider. Our So Paul Collider, you guys used to do a check for Scott every day on all platforms to make sure all of them were running perfectly. And um we miss you, Paul, but but I bet you're sleeping in now. Anyway, so you guys, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Erica. We have beautiful Marcella. We have

the the very studious Sergio now. And the extra studious way better than Tapper. We have Owen Gregorian and our friend of the show. We love you so much. We have our special guest today, Joshua Lysa. Yay. Joshua, are you on mute? Okay. So, you guys. Yep. We asked Joshua to come on today and he was excited because he's going to do um a lesson for us today at the Scott Adams School. So Joshua, take it away. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Erica. It's good to see you all. Sergio, we got Marcela. We got Owen. This is going to be a wonderful, fantastic time together. I am Joshua Lys, also known as Joshua Lysc. I'm the editor publisher for Scott Adams. And I'm also like Scott was a certified professional hypnotist. And I like to introduce hypnosis, hypnotic language, hypnotic applications into my books for on behalf of my clients. Because if you can induce a translike state even in something like let's say a uh a non-fiction book about business, then you can more easily bring those new beliefs into someone so that they can be more productive and can more easily implement your methods. Now, I wanted to teach you based on reframing your brain.

Of course, that's a famous book by Scott, obviously. Um, I assisted him in that endeavor. I was the contributing editor to reframe your brain. And I wanted to teach you all today, take some time to teach you reframing 101. How to actually do it, how it actually uh works. What reframing is is imagine a picture of the ocean. Okay? Now, imagine that that picture has a $5 black and white Walmart frame. Of course, Walmart's prices are kind of weird. So, imagine it's $4.93 for this for this frame. It now looks and feels like a cheap photo, does it not? Now imagine, now imagine that it has a $1,000 ornate gold beautiful like clovers and leaves almost frame around it. Now it feels like a completely different picture. And if the ocean picture in our lives is metaphorically like our lives, then by changing the frame, you change the experience of it. So reframing is simply different uh different frames around

events to go from less productive to more productive thinking, less useful to more uh useful experiences. And of course there are more than 160 reframes in reframing your brain that present new and more productive ways of thinking, feeling and being in your life. And I wanted to teach you how to come up with your own yourself in any area of your life that you need. Hence, we don't have a whiteboard, but we have using me my me using my kids markers reframing 101 with Joshua Lysa. We are now going to teach in hypnosis and I want to teach you a little bit about hypnosis as well. Right now, in hypnosis, the reason that it works so well to create new experiences, of course, the number one use case for hypnosis, clinical hypnosis, is smoking sessation. So, it's it's to it's to it's to quit smoking.

Um, and then there's also losing weight. There's sleeping better. There's stressing less. There's being more productive. I have a hypnosis audio program that is specifically covering sleep stress overeating, which is which is one of the contributing factors of obesity, and also productivity allin-one. And I and I cover everything all at once using a very simple metaphor. Um, but you can come up with your own yourself. Now, when you think about what it is that you want to achieve, you want to have more of something, you want to have less of something, what we're really getting at is uh identity change.

Basically, if you are a different person, you get different results. Scott would always talk about the folly of trying to uh will yourself into habit change, habit transformation, and just how difficult that that truly was. And he was, of course, correct about that. If you try to just kind of white knuckle it. I'm going to sit down here because I feel like the video is a little bit wobbly and I want to de dewobble myself here. I have a little uh camera stand here. Phone stand. All right. Please confirm, Eric, that that looks acceptable for the lesson. Is that okay?

Acceptable. Yes. Don't get any taller and don't turn on the fan. Okay. Oh, that would be kind of funny. Let's zoom. Push down a little bit. There we go. Got one of my kids toys behind me here. That's a fun little dart board. It's great. It's like plungers. Highly recommend it for kids [snorts] as opposed to the pointy dots. Reframe. Okay. So, if you want to have a new experience in life, what you need is a new identity around it. And one of the biggest ones I hear is, "Joshua, how can I be more productive in writing and write better and write more? I just feel like I procrastinate and writer's block and blah blah blah blah blah." And I said, "Well, you you want to write.

That's the that's the thing. You want to write. You're not actually a writer cuz writers just write. It's just what we do. It's who we are. And people will ask me about my my output on books and whatnot, how many clients I take. They're like, "How do you do that?" The question is not how, it's who. They'll say, "How do you do it?" And I said, "I'm Joshua Isaac." And they just sort of glitch for a second. And they say, "When it's when what you do is your identity, you don't have to think about it. You don't have to habit max. You don't have to create some kind of funky routine or something or or try to, you know, let's let's try to build some uh let's try to build uh shall we say uh atomic habits in our life. The story of atomic habits and kind of uh wheeling dealing and allegedly stealing some of Scott's original ideas for that book.

It's kind of like the greatest hits of how to fail at almost everything and still win big with James Claire's name on it in my opinion. Kind of kind of annoying. Um, that's one of the reasons why Scott is considered the most influential personal development writer of all time in space is because so many people have just stolen his ideas. I changed a few words and then put their name on it. So, it goes now about reframe when it's just who you are. You don't have to think about it. And this is why hypnosis works so well so so fast for so many people.

For those just coming in, I'm Joshua Weissk. Yeah. Joshua, can you point your camera down a little bit so we see more of you? Okay. Thanks.

Oh, there we go. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to miss you. Yeah. It would look really funky if it was um like like vertical vertical mode cuz then the video preview would completely cut everything off. All right. So, I'm going to show you this process here right now. Reframing 101 as I said. So [snorts] what the original reframing book teaches and it's called the structure of magic by bandler and grinder. They developed and sort of applied talk hypnosis model called neural linguistic programming or NLP back in the mid to late '7s. And how that got started, how reiming was figured out was Richard Banler, who I had the opportunity to meet and train with him personally. That was wild experience like one of the most successful master persuaders of human history. Just casually chatting about how to deprogram liberals. That was a fun time of their terminal TDS. It can can it be done? Yes, it can.

He Richard Vanler in college he had these talk therapy group th sessions that were on tapes as in it was actually tape. Remember those days when taping was a thing and his job as a student student worker was to transcribe all of these talk therapy sessions. So and that was back when you would listen to it and you would like you know type out the transcript for right and that was his job. I think it was one of the professors at the time. And over the course of all of these hours upon hours upon hours of talk therapy sessions, he noticed that there were patterns in the words he was typing. The patterns were some people had more productive ways of thinking about their issue and other people had less productive ways. And he noticed that the people who got better from the therapy used different words to describe it or they were led to use different words while they were in sort of like that in the zone. They were in in train

with the therapist. They were in a hypnotic like state in conversation and by using different words to describe exper experiences their experiences changed. Scott would talk about the user interface for reality. He would talk about creating your reality, programming your reality, reprogramming, reprogramming your own reality. And there is a fascinating realization that Bandler and Grinder had which they wrote about in their book called the structure of magic which was that uh there are certain Native American tribes and this is to this day the case for various uh locals, original locals, [clears throat] OG locals uh in the developing world.

This one particular tribe that they studied, they had three words for all colors. So all colors, there's something like 30,000 different colors that can be experienced by the human eye. They describe them only as one of three words. And as a result, the people could only see three colors.

Do we know those three words? Uh uh they're in the beginning of the structure of magic in in in Native American language. It wouldn't necessarily mean us to if if we're not okay.

Uh and I'm not in my office at the moment. This is home office experience. Hi everybody. Um yes, but but one was something I think one was like blue green and the other was like red all reds, browns and oranges and the other was some something else, right? It's like collapsing reality just to three things. And that you might say is the word that they like to use was an impoverished reality. If you're if you're using words that keep you from unlocking freedom and having better experiences, then you are experiencing an impoverished reality. And so that's kind of a stark example, but that really is how words work. If you're using words to describe your experience, then everything changes if you use different words, right? It's all downstream from there.

And what the hypnosis session does in clinical hypnosis is when the person is induced and then deepened into that translike state where they're highly suggestible. It's kind of like a waking sleep type of intentional zoning out. We've all had it reading a great book or watching a riveting movie or having a conversation with with a loved one. We kind of just like zone out and we have we sort of lose the sense of time passing. That's a hypnotic state. And so we go into and out of those at all times. And kids under five perpetually and hypnotic and highly suggestible state.

Just wanted to interject. I actually have the structure of magic in front of me. And the three words are lock, tit, and tulock. And lock translates to red, tit translates to green, blue, and tulock translates to yellow, orange, brown. That's all.

Thank you, Owen. Yeah, that's fine. So So those are the three colors. Everything that you now see is one of those three colors only. And I think later in the book they talk about uh there's a different tribe that they speak of. I believe it's um a West African tribe where they they did not have words to describe uh let's say fractions or fractional experiences. So when they would describe where let's just pick a random uh experience where the fruit is on the tree it would just be the fruit's at the top of the tree. Is it literally at the top? Well, there are clusters of her that are halfway at the top. It would be top of tree. It wouldn't be halfway at So, so fraction like halfway uh almost all the way. These sorts of specific descriptions of distance they did not have words for and they did not therefore have experiences of them.

I could not live in this time frame. Yeah. But this is literally like the present day in certain parts of the world and I can't do it. the OG locals as I as I described and and and then when you realize we're so smart, well, we have only three colors for other parts of our experience and therefore we experience only those three colors. So, we're analy we're analogizing here which which does in fact work. So, let's say in a hypnosis session you have been a smoker for 30 years and let's say you have been smoking a number of packs a day and you just you want to stop. You haven't really found the thing. You've tried you tried the patches, you tried the gum, you tried all these different things, you tried cold turkey, you tried this, you tried that, you just keep going back.

[clears throat] Well, what happens in the in the hypnosis session is you are uh let's say you go through the induction, start to feel relaxed and kind of chill. Your conscious mind's guard goes down a little bit. Okay, this is great. kind of like a guided visualization meditation type session and almost like a a massage of some of some way. It sort of feels like that the sort of bonding experience with a skilled hypnotist. And then don't worry, we're coming to this. You can create your own reframes. I have to set I have to set the stage for how this actually works in the hypnosis experience because you can do it to yourself.

The inductions are followed by deepeners. And funny enough, if you've ever actually had a hypnosis session, the practitioner will often use metaphors that related to depth. So they will, for example, talk about how you're going deeper and deeper into the experience. You're sinking deeper and deeper into the chair. So your body is physically telling you where it is that you're going. And they will also use visual metaphors of like going walking down flights of stairs, walking down your favorite path, going down an elevator, and watching the number as you go deeper. So the words that are being used are creating an experience for your body and for your mind. So right there we already have words creating a new experience just from the words alone that the hypnotist is saying. And once you're in that state, they will often begin to tell a a metaphorical story or use a number of analogies that a

5-year-old's mind can understand because the inner child we all have the experience of is our subconscious mind. Our subconscious mind across all of us is approximately 5 years old in its understanding of things. So if you've ever talked to a 5-year-old, they need absolute precision multi-ensory descriptions of things to know how it works. They don't really do well with abstract or theoretical or hypothetical or word salad as Scott would always like to say has to be specific and precise and and tagged to something real. How does it look? How does it feel? These sorts of things. That's why the great best way to teach kids math is using like little magnets or numbers or or physical items. And the same thing with like fractions or even algebra you can teach if you're using to young child if you're using physical items to demonstrate differences and numbers and the numbering of things versus just this

is a one and one plus this sign is one because in what they're memorizing is not the math, it's the visual pattern. We want the kids to take ownership of it and figure it out so that they can be an independent learner sooner. And so when we return to the hypnosis session, that sort of multiensory simulation will occur inside of the hypnosis session. So, inside hypnosis session, let's say this person who has been a chain smoker for all these years, while they're in that five-year-old inner child suggestible uh state in the trance in which the subconscious mind becomes suggestible, the hypnotist will tell a story in which the person listening has a new identity.

Has a new identity just from the words alone. And it's because they're thinking new things. They have different feelings about them. They suggest different actions being taken and therefore a different outcome. And the identity that is then given to the person in this trance is something like I am a non-smoker. Not I want to quit. I want to stop. I want to those are negations. Okay? Those are negations. Those are all the things you don't want to do. Like one of the worst one of the hardest ways to ever lose a single pound of unnecessary fat is I don't want to be fat. What did I just say? I just said because 5-year-olds have a hard time with don't do that. And it's like, well, you're just talking about what I shouldn't be doing, but what should I be doing instead? You give them doing it. This is every parents of young children's experience. Tell a kid not to do something, you're just telling them to

do it. And then you think they're trying to aggravate you, but they may not actually get well, what ought I be doing instead. Specific, precise instructions. They make a mess, they spill the piece, and they sp you know, don't do that. rather that something like let's now pick up the peas and put them in this little container where they go. It's it's precise these peas over here. For those who come in a little bit late, I'm Joshua at almost about to teach reframing 101 specifically with the steps and how you can do it yourself.

But what I'm doing is explaining the hypnosis experience and why it works so well so quick. What affirmations do is it's effectively a micro hypnosis session, a micro self hypnosis section session that you run it again and again. We what Scott would always do is say the things that you want to be real like 15 times. That was his method taught in reframe your brain and elsewhere in his work. But really, it's the repetition that's key. And so in these sets of suggestions that you'll be given by your hypnotist that you're working with in the clinical environment, they will tell you the same thing in a bunch of different ways. They will they will speak to you'll use visuals and metaphors for the mind's eye. They'll talk about how things sound in the mind's ear, how it smells to you, so to speak, metaphorically speaking, for the mind's nose, right? The mind's eyes is not just the only thing that you have.

You have the other senses, but your subconscious runs a simulation of it. The subconscious can't tell the real from the imagined. That's why when you're watching a movie and it's intense, you feel it in your body. Your subconscious mind, because you're in a trance, doesn't know the difference. You think it's happening to you. This is why uh romance novels have been so attractive for so many generations of women. The writing is so multi-ensory that they feel like it's actually happening and they're actually experiencing this affair in real life, physiologically in that translike state.

And many become addicted to that experience much in the same way that for men uh adult content of course and I mean adult wink wink uh family show uh the body thinks it's actually happening to them. The subconscious mind thinks it's real. And that's how all strange let's call them tastes may develop with prolonged consumption of adult entertainment because you are telling your subconscious this is what I like. Okay. So then you begin to change that. You begin to move. You begin to evolve yourself and change. You're uh impoverishing yourself over and over and over. Stop impoverishing yourself kids. Wink wink.

Now, because of that experience, the subconscious mind with this hypothetical person goes, "Oh, I am a I'm a non-smoker now. It's just who I am." They come out of the session, new identity. They forget that there's a lighter in the car and that there's a pack of half half filled pack of cigarettes in there, and they they just forget because I'm a non-smoker now. What do I care that it's the identity change? And with reframing to create them for yourself, this goes it goes like this. I'm going to hold it right up here for you so you can see it. Okay, we're going to be working down this list here. So, when you use new words to describe your experiences, you have new thoughts about them. Cuz what are thoughts but worries, frankly? If you have new words to describe your experiences, for example, I just want to lose weight. I want to stop being fat, for example. The words you're using inside of your brain are fat, fat, fat.

I feel like a fat person and therefore I do things that result in me overeating as much as I want to use my willpower to stop and then my outcome is I gain five pounds by on this diet. Okay. If we use different words an affirmation might be I first name last name and and then you use the body mass index you're actually going for as your affirmation. Use different words. Well, if you if you use affirmations like that, what's going to happen is you're going to think over time and it can be in very short order that you're the type of person who is this body mass index and what does that person feel like? What do those thoughts feel like?

Thoughts drive feelings. I love myself versus I hate myself. Just those words alone, very different feelings. Very different. So, thoughts become feelings. Feelings becomes actions. I just just feel like doing it is every experience. Feelings go directly to actions. We buy on emotion justified with logic. At no point is anything like logic happening here. Okay? And that's okay because five-year-old remember abstract metaphors those sorts of things. We have to speak with precision. We have new outcomes. The things that we want. And these four stages after the words make up our identity. I want to quit smoking.

I'm now thinking about smoking. I feel like it's harder to resist. I lose my willpower. I smoke. And then now I have cancer. Okay. Let's say that's that's the lung cancer situation, right? From a smoker. I am a non-smoker. I first name, last name, and a non-smoker. Now, in a hypnosis session, that's skillfully implanted in the subconscious. But you can use Scott's 15point affirmation experience to do this. And now you begin to think differently because now you're using different words to describe who you are. And then you feel differently.

And then you act differently. And then you have different outcomes. Hypnosis sessions speedrun this process into an hour and a half. Doing it yourself, it might take a little bit longer. I I successfully was able to stop heavily drinking. I was like one of those craft beer millennial hipster types. Okay. I was able to successfully stop that with this model in very short order. As in like one night of attempting this. It was December 31st and January 1st, 2022 to 2023. I did this in one night. I have some content on this. Um, but this this can work for a number of things that you want to achieve yourself. Use different words to describe how you feel and what you want to do. Use different words. Everything changes. So, this is why it's so important to give yourself more than three colors. Any questions about this or anything else before we move to

I fully I love this so much words are so important you guys and like your conscious mind doesn't understand sarcasm like it it's very literal even like I I am always thinking in sarcasm but I have to be careful because I know that my brain doesn't always understand the joke so words matter and the other word I almost never use is try like, well, I'll try to lose weight or I'm going to try to go to the gym. That's just giving yourself permission not to do it. So to say like, I'm going to try not to smoke. Well, you just gave yourself permission to still smoke.

So I I Yeah. Yeah. Or I want to, right? I I want to do something. So then I don't know why I zoomed out like that. So Oh, yeah. You can see the cool little cool little kids dart board back there. Very cool.

That's cuz Owen popped on. Oh, okay. So, this this is where I I'll leave I'll leave you all with and then I have to scoop. Um, if you want something, the words you use to describe that want are so significant because if you say I want this, well then to succeed at it is what? Is to just keep wanting it. It's not actually to have it. Now, if you are using identity language like become or be or am, those to be sort of verbs, those describe identity. It looks like about 3,000 people have joined since I kind of started my my speed on reframing. We're talking about reframing 101. I'm uh Joshua Lysk. There Roma needs to add the names on this so we can know who we are. Erica is a lovely hostess here. Um yes. So using different words to describe what it is that you want in the language of having an identity, new words, different thoughts, different feelings, different actions, different outcomes. And that's how reframing

works. Imagine you have a fourth color in that native language of this this very California Indian tribe. They now have new thoughts. Every time they see that color or even hypothetically, they now have some new feelings associated with that realization. Just they act differently. So maybe as they create dyes from it and the different outcomes where now they have unimpoverished their cultures color experience.

Yeah. Any questions from anyone else who's here with us or shall I uh bid bid farewell for today?

Well, I just want to say thank you first of all and I want to laugh because you know the reframes work you guys. So, just uh behind the curtain, as Scott would say, all of us here on the screen had dinner together in San Francisco area um when we went to Scott's memorial service. And it was just so funny because the waiter came over and was like, "Oh, does anybody want a drink?" And you know, we're all kind of like looking around and nobody wanted a drink. But after the waiter left and I was like, "Were you all just thinking like alcohol is poison?" And like nobody wanted to be like the one to be like, "I'll have a drink." We were all like, "Nope, alcohol is poison. We don't want to drink." But that reframe just sticks with you and it was just a really funny moment where we just started laughing.

Yeah, your words matter. And this this follows that exact process here. So if you say alcohol is adult beverage or it's alcohol is fun then you think about fun things and fun experiences you feel like having fun you take the action the outcome is a hangover or let's say uh cerosis of the liver

or poison I'm now thinking about poisons like other poisons like those blue frogs in South America I feel like avoiding those blue frogs and never touching one never being in a situation where I'm near I am now acting as if beer is a poisonous blue frog from South America. Keep it behind glass. Do don't even touch it.

That's how this works. Re and you can do this for yourself in any area of your life. So, the one thing I ruined as a technologist is um

I have played with this with like AI like Grock where I've said, you know, give me a reframe for this and it it seems to do a halfway decent job with it without too much guidance. And with all the stuff you just gave us, it seems like a set of rules that you can teach a GPT or a Grock to do and maybe be able to just feed it, here's my current frame, give me the reframe, maybe tell it what outcome you're looking for or something. Have you tried that or do you think that would work?

I have. Yes. And I think what it's it will try to be sophisticated. What you need to focus on is what is the outcome that you want not g give me a usual frame versus reframe style Scott Adams formula. It doesn't quite figure that out. If you explain uh Grock here's how reframing works. The outcome that I want is this. How I currently think about it is this. Give it the words you use to think about and explain the process of the outcome. What words give me a new identity set that result in a new outcome and then say follow the usual frame versus reframe formula? Usual frame the usual words you're currently using. Now give me the reframe with different words following this process and I believe that that will get you there. And with that I have the scoop for today. But but first I'll give one question. Looks like Marcela has one question before I scoop. There's like several questions, but maybe we'll ask

you off, you know, um, one of them is at me on X or or just DM me directly, Joshua. If if you have any questions about this, make sure you take your screenshot of it right now. There it is. There you are. A couple will be taking a screenshot. Yeah, there it is.

Even better, you guys screenshot. Yeah, you guys, even better. um homework assignment if those who want to participate, create a reframe using what Joshua taught you today and tag Joshua like make a post about it and say this was the uh current thought and this is how I came to a reframe and he'll look them over and and let you know like I think that's a good practice. And don't don't have embarrassment. Remember this is like a non-mbarrassment zone, okay? just give it a try and then maybe you're going to get pointers from an expert and that would be amazing.

We'd love to see it. That's right. That's right. And and and lastly, the key the homework again as as Erica is saying is your usual frame versus reframe. The usual frame is the thing that you're thinking and kind of stuck on. And then the reframe are the new words that create the identity set resulting in the new outcome. And it's like usual frame. I want to stop smoking. Reframe. I'm a non-smoker for example as an example. Now that wouldn't be necessarily one that you would teach other people, but it would be one for you for your self hypnosis experience.

And how what what does what does a non-smoker think about because of that? Well, they don't think about smoking. They think about doing other things with their time when they need a break, right? They go on a walk instead of just standing outside in the cold smoking a joint, right? Or or whatever you smoke with. um the do feelings and outcome actions and outcomes associated with that hypnosis speed runs that process but affirmations are a way of reframing yourself.

Yeah, thank you Joshua. It's my pleasure. Thank you all and again we'll talk to you soon.

Get your homework Joshua on X. Take care. We'll we'll post your link. Okay. He had to run dad duty. He is a busy busy guy. So we appreciate him coming on here you guys. So, we're going to shift to some news. And Owen has uh picked out some great stories for us to talk about. And uh don't you guys love Sergio's new background and Owen's new background? We look we look extra super smart, but you know. So, Owen, go ahead. What do you have for us?

Well, speaking of embarrassment free zone, I think we can start with the story that that some people requested we talk about. Um, doctors found a live World War I artillery shell in a man's rectum in France. Uh, 24 year old man sparked an evacuation in a French hospital after they found an 8- inch long World War I artillery shell in his rectum.

Rectum damn near killed him. Sorry, I had to say there, Owen, how did it get there?

Well, I I think they at least suspect that he put it there. Um, I don't think they did speculate as to why, but you probably all have something in your mind about why he might have done that. They they

the media speculated it might have something to do with his social life, but that's as far as they went with that. They did mention the medical staff are accustomed to treating victims injured during sexual games. So, it could be something along those lines. What do you think?

You think? I just I just imagine the the bomb diffusing guy, you know, like they call him up. is like, "Hey, we have a a bomb. We have like a possible explosion. We need you to come over." And they're on their way. You know, like, "Oh, I'm so excited. My first day on the job." And uh they were like, "Well, good news is that, you know, it's not a big bomb, but you know what it is." You know, that would be a a big surprise for me if I had to like go in there and retrieve a bomb from a from a rectum, you know. So,

yeah. Do you think the bomb sniffing dog could have found it? That's a good one.

Yeah. Maybe I like the way Sergio says it rectum. Yes. Yeah. Makes it sound better.

Does this microphone work well, people? Because I have a new microphone. Yeah. Okay, good.

Yeah. All right. Well, moving moving on. Um, this is a story that actually seemed to have gone viral when I posted it. Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they're disabled. The article was actually written by somebody who was one of those people. Uh they explained that they actually do have uh I think it was like endometriosis or something, some real condition. Um but the person's explaining that it's you know it's almost half the people in Stanford do that. And and the reason this person claimed their disability at at Stanford was that they discovered from someone else that if you did say you were disabled, you could get your own dorm room and have a single room and you could have the nicest building on campus and you could get extra time on your tests and you could get exempted from some of the academic requirements and get basically the first class easy easy mode treatment by just saying you're

disabled. Um, and so, you know, that's currently 2,850 students out of 7,500 at Stanford, um, that get all these accommodations and things that that's

I'm not surprised though. Um, I used to tutor um not anymore, but uh like for IB League school, uh high school um like different people that went to Ivy League schools. One of the things they told me for the SAT is that they would have a doctor say they're disabled because that would give them more time in organization. So all of these people who went to Harbor who who I um helped tutor would would let me know that they had like so for my perspective they already had those for test purposes. Yeah, I mean it could be. And it does say in the article that a lot of these are mental conditions, probably most of them. Um, like ADHD or anxiety. And those are things that are really hard to diagnose or maybe too easy to diagnose. Um, I've certainly had some experience knowing that people can just literally walk into a regular doctor, not like a psychiatrist or any specialist, and just say, "I have trouble focusing." You

know, and and that's about all it takes to get prescribed ADHD drugs. And um it's pretty amazing how easy it is to get riddle in or you know whatever it is you're looking for and that's you know that's probably enough for a lot of these colleges. You know there are more sophisticated tests and I know some people who have gone through that process to actually get diagnosed by a specialist and they it is a rigorous process. I'm aware of what that consists of. And so you can have like a a you know a test that shows how you do on a test when you have a time limit versus when you don't have a time limit. Um and you know there are ways to pinpoint what the issue is mentally. But a lot of people don't even go through all that.

And I think these um disa disability agencies I guess I'll call them at these colleges I think also have an incentive to just hand out these accommodations like that. I don't think they're very rigorous in saying you need proof from a doctor or you need some test or some process you have to go through that they're you know the way they would put it is we're here to help people so we're just trying to help people. But I think the reality is also that if you just look at it from an incentives perspective, as Scott often does, the more disabled people they're quote unquote helping, the more of those disability people you need and the bigger the department grows and the more money they get.

Right. Yeah. So if you go to 40% of the campus, suddenly you're a massive agency that needs lots of resources

and um everything ends up catering to all these kids that have these. I thought like half of the college students were already mentally disabled anyways, you know, just by

Well, I mean, we can we can connect this story to that other story that says something like half of liberal people say they have a mental health issue, right?

That some massive percentage of them say that. And this could be a factor in that they might be doing that because it gives them an advantage. Right.

That's right. So, pretty amazing kind of a scandal. Um, you know, I don't know what should be done about it other than that I would say that it's pretty terrible because I think it takes away resources from the people who do have legitimate disabilities. Um, you know, there are people that do have mental disabilities or physical disabilities that do require accommodations to put them on an even playing field with everyone else. But if you give it to everybody, then you're not making it an even playing field. And you're also kind of neutering the educational process to the point where what happens to these kids when they get out in the real world and they get a job. Employers don't give accommodations for things like this. I mean, they do have to abide by the Disabilities Act, but I think in most cases, you know, they're not going to be as liberal or as easy as giving these things out. And if you can't do the job

because you've never been put under time pressure or you've never had to meet a deadline, then how are you going to do that in real life, right?

Kind of a real open question in my mind. Yeah, I agree. So between the Chinese students and then the dis disabled students like you know there's always one group getting shafted. You know, I I have to say the sad part is that when I was tutoring um not the very rich, but just like middle class kids, they actually did have uh disabilities, but their parents weren't aware of these uh accommodations they could get and so they would not get them. So, it's sad to see that because um that's a lot of us. Like I didn't even know you could get that for like the bar exam. Uh I would have liked to have had more time doing my bar exam or the SAT or something else, but it wasn't known to us. It was like only the very like elite know the system and they know how to work it. And I don't disagree like they're smart about it, you know, but it doesn't it doesn't uh like apply to everybody that has this disabilities,

right? All right. All right. Well, uh moving into the AI is taking over the world theme that we often come back to. Uh there's an interesting article I posted called Your Job isn't disappearing, it's shrinking around you in real time. Um and it's an interesting article. I'd suggest you read it. It's kind of long, but I think it's worth it. And the reason I say that is that it kind of walks through what's happening, I think, and it also talks about how to best deal with it. Because I think the first thing that I thought was valuable is it goes through the like three approaches I think they used that were that don't work. And and some of those are probably the things everyone's thinking they need to do. like well maybe I need to focus on soft skills or maybe I need to um you know like try to figure out what's the human part of my job or you know maybe I can double down on my strengths or things like that and

and and those things generally don't work because the AI agents and AI is kind of rapidly taking over a lot of those things and it's not really going to help you to just retreat into one little part of your job and I think the advice it gives you and I don't know if this is going to work or not, but it it does seem like a better idea to me is that to sort of win under this scenario, what you can do is to say build a new role where you're the orchestrator of the AI and you're using the AI to get to like impossible scale. Like an example they use is running 50 campaign marketing campaigns at once. And so if you can identify something that like where where he suggests to start is to say if you can identify something that if you could do 10 times as much of it would be really valuable to do that but up until now without AI you can only do a certain amount of it but you're limited in terms of how much you can do

that if you can figure out how to use AI to 10x that task then you can figure out how to scale it and have massive results right and find the patterns and then um pitch those new capabilities to your boss and say, "Hey, I can do 10 times as much now. Look what I can do. I can add all this value by using AI to do this new task where I'm running the AI, but I'm able to orchestrate all these agents and use them to scale what I'm doing to something that current, you know, previously was impossible." Um, and and that would be one way of kind of mastering the AI as opposed to just having your job disappear. What do you guys think?

I Yeah, I like that idea. I just feel like if you can do 50 campaigns at once instead of one, then it's going to be like, well, can you do a 100? Can you do a thousand? It's just I don't know. The AI still is freaking me out a little. Like, I love it as a personal use item, but I feel a little concerned about jobs. Like, do we need to do everything so big and fast and rapid and like the Amazon world and can I get it today? Can I get it overnight? I don't know. I don't know. I'm so Libra on this. I'm like, I can see both sides, but I feel like it's a slippery slope into impossible expectations and job loss. I still feel that way.

Yeah. I mean, I definitely think I feel like we're in this transitional period where it is coming. It's not perfect. So, a lot of things, you know, still require a lot of human oversight to make things happen, but it's rapidly becoming where you could just deploy a bunch of agents to do something and get a relatively good result. And I've seen that myself. I've used I use AI for work every day now. And [snorts] it does 10x my capabilities in many cases. I've I've generated a proposal deck like a presentation in a matter of an hour that might have taken me three days if I did it myself. And um I you know that means I can do three times as much work but or or it means I can sit on my butt and work an hour a day. But pretty soon people are going to realize that's happening. And so that's not going to be a long-term solution. And that's why I say we're in kind of this transitional period where you might be

able to kind of take advantage of it short term just to get a lot done in a shorter period of time and maybe relieve a bunch of stress and not have as much work to do. But eventually people are going to realize, hey, you're not actually staying busy or you're not really doing as much as you could or this other person is doing twice as much as you. And so the competition is going to catch up. And um I think if you can get better at doing it than someone else, then maybe you can still maintain some advantage. Um and and also just carve out a role for yourself where you you know you're an important part of this whole process as opposed to just letting AI take over and you know sitting back and watching your job disappear. So I I do see some truth in this. I I don't I don't know that it's as bad as the article makes it out to be because I do think there's still a lot of hallucinations and bad results and

and you know the weird thing is there is this two movies on one screen going on because like some coders and programmers will say oh my god this is like you know nothing I've ever seen I can do 10 times as much and it it's like just a complete world changer but then there's other studies and and [snorts] people that have said it's no better. In fact, it's much worse because it's creating all this bad code and people have to clean it up and you're going to end up with all this broken stuff that humans have to clean up after and you might even end up in a place where nobody even wants to help you do it because it's such a mess.

And yeah, what if it's hackable? Like what if somebody hacks it and hacks the code and now how do you so now do you need a human person to go through the 500 times more code that was written to find the mistake? I don't know.

Yeah. And that I mean that's a real concern and I think that's probably one of the bigger ones with coding is that unless you really know what you're doing in terms of how to tell the code what to do and not do, you're very easily going to walk down that path where there's going to be big security holes in the code and it's going to be riddled full of stuff. And I think we've seen some of that. Like I don't know if it's a factor in some of the recent hacks that we've seen, but you know, you've seen these anti- ice things where everybody's identities were exposed and things were just easily hacked and somebody got into a website and replaced it with a Tom Hman meme and things like that where, you know, you could either say that whoever coded it is bad at it, or you might say, and it might be true, that it was all vibe coded and nobody ever even looked at what was being coded. It was just deployed really quickly

and nobody was smart enough or did the right things to make sure that it actually had the security that it needed.

Yeah. How do you oversee that if it's happening so fast? You can't go ahead, Sergio.

No, go ahead. Well, I I I mean, you can do the same thing with security in the sense that you can kind of have an agent that's looking for security problems and trying to make sure that it doesn't do something it shouldn't do and that it's using secure coding practices. But I don't know how good that is. And I I really do suspect it's not nearly as good as it needs to be because um cyber security is this constantly changing field. It's this cat-and- mouse game that's constantly going on about new vulnerabilities and patching vulnerabilities and making sure everything's being done exactly the right way. And it often means you have to do things in ways you'd rather not.

Meaning you have to make it kind of hard to use because you want to make sure nobody can do things that they shouldn't be able to do with it. So like there's this concept called zero trust for example. And that means you need to kind of be skeptical every step of the way to say is this the person that I think it is? Do they have the rights to do what they should be doing or or do they have rights they shouldn't have? And how do I catch somebody when they're trying to do something they shouldn't do? And maybe there's even insider threats, not just people outside trying to get in. And there's a million. I mean, it's it's a huge field in itself. And I think it's hard to say how could an AI agent be constantly thinking about all these things every time you're writing a new piece of software.

Yeah. So um you know how Steve Jobs So what I think that the take here that we need to uh go home with is that um is AI using us or are we using AI right and um and I think that's the question I think that um Steve Jobs said it really well about a computer being a bicycle for the mind and uh Brian Romeli reframe on AI. I love it because instead of calling it artificial intelligence, which sounds like sugar, like fake sugar, he calls it um an intelligence amplifier. It's something that you use for your own good to to amplify your intelligence and and make you um more powerful in this world. And I like Owen, you told me something um back in um in California, you had this reframe about the API, how some people live under the API and or over it and like how you use that also for the AI. So I like that reframe that you you were using uh because it gives power to the people. So you're in alignment with Brian on that.

So uh that's it. Yeah. I mean, and the concept there is you're either going to be living above the API or below the API. And I would say the same thing in the context of AI. you're either going to be living above AI where you're controlling AI and telling what to do or you're going to be told what to do by the AI ultimately. And I think it's going to be that bifurcation. Um, and I posted a story along those lines today. Um, it was actually literally probably just a website that I was posting the text from, but it's called Human Paying, and it's a new service that lets AI agents give tasks to humans.

And so it it's kind of this new thing where like you can, you know, have your AI agent

assign tasks to people where people can sign up for this where they can say, "Okay, it's a $5 task or $50 task or whatever it is and they can decide decide, okay, I want to do these tasks

and basically give photos or transcripts or whatever it is back to the AI agent where in cases where you need some connection to the real world or you need a human to verify something that the agents can have this sort of API.

Oh my god. Get humans to work for them. And it's Fiverr, but AI being our boss. Like, it's starting.

Exactly. Yeah. It's a brave new world I think we're going into here. Is it brave? But what if the AI start fighting and then, oh, forget it. You know, I'll go down this rabbit hole. Okay. Fiverr. Maybe I'm like an AI boss. Didn't Scott say that uh the next president was going to be AI then election wise you know that it's going to be se elected by AI along those lines that we probably are having our last real human president something like that

but I mean not not like that like AI is the one that is deciding who we are voting for.

Yeah. So this, you know, that I think we might get to that, you know, hopefully strong

directionally. I think we're moving in that direction because I think um the scale of AI and the persuasiveness of AI have gotten to the point where I think, you know, we've seen studies, I posted stories about this, too. I think you've seen them where AI is more persuasive than a person and it doesn't really have a problem lying to persuade somebody. And you can deploy these things at scale, right? Like you could easily have a 100 bots or a thousand bots at your fingertips and just say this is what I want to persuade people of go spawn a thousand bots that go make social media posts about this and change the conversation and use

why don't we start doing that for the midterms you know we should we have to start doing that you know let's recruit AI to help uh in the midterms you know so it's better than nationalizing the

we we might have to I mean I I certainly am not condoning lying to persuade people but Um, I do think using the persuasiveness of AI is going to become increasingly important in politics,

like we did with Scott's IQ. Yeah. You just feed it to EXA. Exactly. 185. Yeah.

180. Yes. It's a fact. It's a fact. Join Scott. Yeah. Right. But um yeah, no, I I mean I I do think that it it's probably going to become increasingly a factor and you're going to have a hard time telling when you're talking to a bot as opposed to a person. And a lot of the stuff you see on social media especially, I think, is going to end up being AI generated. Even the stuff in the media is becoming more AI generated. And that means AI is deciding what language to use and how to frame things. And you know based on whatever biases are built into it from the training, it's going to make a difference in terms of how people view view what happens. So it's a scary time.

By the way, there's I'm sure you've seen an AI Scott account. It's not approved by the family. It's not cool.

Mhm. But it's interesting and but it's assigning opinions and thoughts to something that looks a lot like Scott and they don't have, you know, the blessing to be doing that. So, we just discourage you not to engage with it. And I'm sure Scott's family would appreciate that. I just wanted to put that out there. It's uh it's not good. Okay. Do we have one last story? Well, [snorts] um I mean along those lines, there was an academic that was complaining about that same issue where he was saying that um AI was creating a bunch of fake things, deep fakes or I think it was John Mshimer was saying it's just popping up everywhere and it's this big hassle and he's trying to get it all taken down and he's having a hard time doing it even just keeping up with it because it's popping up all over YouTube and all these different channels and things. And so I think that's also increasingly becoming a problem. And

then there was another story I posted about how it really is an option now to have an AI afterlife, but the question that the article raises is, you know, what kind of legal rights do you have to your identity after that point? Because once it gets into the hands of AI, you don't know who's programming that. You don't know what where those scripts are coming from. You don't know where the words are coming from or what that AI is saying. That might be very different than what you would say. And I think that's where it becomes really dangerous. And I think that's why Scott said he didn't want it is that he wasn't convinced the technology was there to really constrain it to really say only the things he would say and to accurately represent his points of view.

And I think that's why he's asking everyone to respect his intellectual property and not create all these AI versions of him because I think what we've seen so far with these things is that it's not accurately saying what Scott would say about stuff. And I don't know how it could really, but um you know the technology just isn't there for that. And I think the Scott's estate needs to keep control of that.

And nobody can think for Scott or the way Scott would or know how Scott would feel about something. So, you know, if you see things like that, like, okay, yeah, I marveled at the technology of it all, but just like Owen said, you know, Scott had talked about wanting something like that, but he also said in the last year that it's not at all where he'd want it to be and didn't want that to happen. So, if it's ever going to happen, it's going to be with the approval of the family. And, you know, who knows who this person is.

You know, are they going to monetize it? Are they trying to make money off of Scott? Well, how convenient for them. So, you know, please um don't engage with it. And don't share it. I know, you know, that it was exciting at first, but it's not it's not family approved. It's not Scott approved. Um that being said, guys, we're going to wrap it up. Um, we so appreciate Joshua coming on today. I love this group right here. Um, you guys are amazing. And I mean, look at Sergio. Look at Owen. Like Marcella, you guys are so amazing. Um, but the people we love the most are in this chat and watching this stream.

And you guys are so sweet and supportive and kind. and thank you for being here with the school, with us as we navigate our way. Um, Shelley has been so supportive and amazing and she gets this thing up and running for us every day. And um, we'll be back on tomorrow and um, we have some amazing guests planned again for next week. Um, we'll see what happens tomorrow and Friday, but we'll we'll be here with you guys and um, let's have a closing sip together and everyone go out and be useful today. Touch some grass and um, do a reframe and tag Joshua Lysk. I'll make a post after so you can see his name and everything we did, but he will love to get the feedback. He takes his job very seriously and he's one of Scott's best students and a personal friend of Scott.

So, let's make sure we support. Okay. So, a final sip to our beloved Scott who we miss terribly. And um thank you to everybody watching. We appreciate you so much. Okay. To Scott.

To Scott. To Scott. Thank you all. Bye you guys. Be soul.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Episode 3087 - The Scott Adams School 02/04/26"?

Scott Adams (Guest), Joshua Lysa (Guest), Erica (Guest), Owen Gregorian (Guest), Sergio (Guest), Marcella (Guest).

What is "Episode 3087 - The Scott Adams School 02/04/26" about?

The main topic centers around a lively and interactive morning session led by Scott Adams, where he engages with a live audience, discusses new technology that allows for visual interaction, and invites participants to enjoy a "simultaneous sip" of their favorite beverage. Key highlights include camaraderie among viewers, playful banter, and an emphasis on the enjoyment of daily rituals like…

What is mentioned in this Real Coffee with Scott Adams episode?

10 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Scott Adams, Joshua Lysa, Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success, NLP, The Structure of Magic, Stanford. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Episode 3087 - The Scott Adams School 02/04/26"?

The episode runs 1 h 1 min; the transcript is about 11,012 words in 115 timestamped sections.

More from Real Coffee with Scott Adams

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated February 5, 2026.