Transcript

Episode 3090 - The Scott Adams School 02/09/26

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

· 1 h · 10,031 words · 114 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Episode 3090 - The Scott Adams School 02/09/26", an episode of Real Coffee with Scott Adams published February 9, 2026 (1 h, about 10,031 words). It mentions 11 people, works and ideas, including John Nosta, Scott Adams, Psychology Today, Brian Romeli, Oglvie.

What this episode is about

The Scott Adams School session focuses on fostering a community for learning and discussion, highlighting the importance of connection and growth among participants. The session features introductions of various attendees and invites everyone to participate in a shared experience, referred to as the "simultaneous sip," while emphasizing a lighthearted and engaging atmosphere.

Key takeaways

  • Good conversations, like great coffee, require the right blend: connection, curiosity, and a dash of spontaneity.
  • AI isn't just tech; it's a new way to 'gather around' and bridge human interaction with digital intellect.
  • Old wisdom meets modern tech: 'to sit up close' has never been so potent in our digital age.
  • Transformative dialogue thrives on intimacy; as we connect with AI, are we also rewiring our human relationships?
  • Curiosity over memorization: the future of learning leans more on exploration than rote regurgitation.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Scott Adams, Steve Gutenberg, John Nosta, Psychology Today
  2. – 20:00: Norman Rockwell, Kasakcoma
  3. – 30:00: Brian Romeli
  4. – 50:00: Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan
  5. – 1:00:00: Scott Adams, Psychology Today, Albert Einstein

Notable quotes from "Episode 3090 - The Scott Adams School 02/09/26"

  • The best part of the day, except for the rest of it, which is going to be pretty good, too. Yes, it's going to be coffee with Scott Adams this morning. And all you need, you…
    about Scott Adams · at
  • Cardiovascular physiology to strategic thinking. over the past several years, he's focused exclusively on artificial intelligence and its impact on human cognition. And I want…
    about John Nosta · at
  • Didn't really align with my interests. I tend to be more of a creative or strategic thinker. So that's where I ended up working in advertising and marketing with a large…
    about Oglvie · at
  • Going to be real interesting and real important for us. So a few hundred years ago, a guy named Gutenberg did something that helped us think. He created a printing press. Now…
    about Steve Gutenberg · at
  • Days when you type up, where's the best Mexican restaurant in Rumpson, New Jersey, we all know it's Kasakcoma, by the way. But anyway, it's it gives you a long complicated…
    about Kasakcoma · at
  • Seeing play out here today. So what Norman Rockwell said I thought was really interesting. He said, The Lucy is a horrible machine and I'd be lost without it. And I think to a…
    about Norman Rockwell · at
  • Ability to find that spark and we're developing that spark in new and interesting ways because if my son wants to learn gravity from Carl Sean, I can do that. I can have an LLM create a Carl Sean like teacher and when that happens I.
    about Carl Sagan · at
  • Everybody to go out there and you know and don't go to the link where it says the digital self. Click on that on psychology today and it'll give you just a laundry list of my…
    about Psychology Today · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • John Nosta — Person · Main guest / primary speaker · 1 mention · first at
    Featured guest who frames AI as a shift from 'unlocking words/facts' to 'unlocking thought' and discusses cognitive offloading, education, and human cognition.
  • Scott Adams — Person · Referenced host / namesake of the community · 4 mentions · first at
    The session is framed as the 'Scott Adams School' and opens with a clip from 'Coffee with Scott Adams'; his 'gather around' phrasing becomes a springboard for Nosta’s thesis about intimacy/iteration with AI.
  • Brian Romeli — Person · Connector / referenced upcoming guest · 2 mentions · first at
    Introduces/links John Nosta to the show and is referenced for a framing shift from 'AI' to 'IA' (intelligence amplifier). Also mentioned as likely appearing later in the week.
    And I'd like to welcome our special guest. His name is John Nosta. And I'm so grateful to Brian Romeli that you guys all remember. because he introduced us and I had to ask John to tell me how to explain him because he's.
  • Albert Einstein — Person · Referenced expert / illustrative example · 3 mentions · first at
    Used as a cultural archetype of 'genius' and as a source for an analogy about gravity as 'bending space-time' to argue AI is 'bending thought/cognition.'
    Think. And we just can't we just can't say okay never mind. We'll just do it and see what happens. Albert Einstein said that gravity is not a force. He says that it actually is…
  • Steve Gutenberg — Person · Referenced historical innovator · 2 mentions · first at
    Serves as the first step in Nosta’s three-part progression: printing press 'unlocked words,' internet 'unlocked facts,' and LLMs 'unlock thought.'
  • Norman Rockwell — Person · Referenced artist / case study · 7 mentions · first at
    Used as an analogy for 'technological augmentation' and how tools can constrain/shape creative output—paralleling how LLMs may shape human cognition.
  • Carl Sagan — Person · Referenced educator/science communicator · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as an example of how AI could personalize teaching by simulating a preferred explainer’s style (a 'Carl Sagan-like teacher').
  • Doogie Howser — Person · Pop-culture reference (fictional character) · 1 mention · first at
    Invoked to characterize Nosta’s early academic productivity (writing medical papers at 18) by comparing him to the teen doctor character.
    You remember Doogie Howouser. So you asked me if I know who Doogiehouser is and that you were writing medical papers for Harvard at 18 years old.

Books & papers

  • Psychology Today — Book · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at
    John Nosta has written over 500 articles for Psychology Today, showcasing his expertise in AI and human cognition.

Companies & orgs

  • Oglvie — Company · Business focus · 2 mentions
    John Nosta worked at Ogilvie, the largest healthcare advertising agency, focusing on healthcare advertising and marketing.

Places & events

  • Kasakcoma — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at
    Mentioned as the best Mexican restaurant in Rumpson, New Jersey, in a casual context.

Full transcript with timestamps

So, now we're going live. Let's see how we're doing. Is locals live? Yep. There's Stephen.

Oh, good morning you guys. There's magician. Good morning. Bookish. Good evening.

We have a special guest today, you guys. We're going to introduce you. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Scott Adams School. Just a reminder, this is not to replicate Scott. We don't think we're Scott. We could never be Scott. This is the Scott Adams School. Um, and we're just here to commune, have a good time, keep learning, keep growing, and um hopefully we'll always have something interesting for us all to uh learn and understand and talk about. So, we can't do any of that you all until we do one thing first. So, gather in, gather in.

We have to get this going. This is a short sip because we have a lot to talk about today. So, is everyone ready? Everyone looks good. Hey, Nikki.

Okay, let's mute for the sip. Here we go. Hey everybody, it's good to see you. Come on in. Gather out. It's time for the best part of the day, except for the rest of it, which is going to be pretty good, too. Yes, it's going to be coffee with Scott Adams this morning. And all you need, you don't need much. You need a cuper, a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or sty, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind, and fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day. The thing makes everything better.

The simultaneous sip. Erica, I see you there. Dr. Funk juice, grab your mugs. Mara, come on. Go. Ah, I got a little today. I needed that this Monday morning.

Erica, he saw you. He saw me. So, welcome everyone. I'm Erica and uh let me just pull this up here. You guys want to introduce yourselves really quick and then I'll introduce John.

Good morning. This is Marcella. Good morning. This is Sergio. and Owen. Oh, he is smooth.

And I am Owen Gregorian. Good morning, everyone. And I'd like to welcome our special guest. His name is John Nosta. And I'm so grateful to Brian Romeli that you guys all remember. Um because he introduced us and I had to ask John to tell me how to explain him because he's got quite the talent stack, let's say, to put it in Scott terms. So John, he has an eclectic background for sure. Um from cardiovascular physiology to strategic thinking. over the past several years, he's focused exclusively on artificial intelligence and its impact on human cognition. And I want to also say we had quite an interesting phone call because I am not an AI afficionado at all and I'm kind of like your base level person, but I've never had a conversation about AI like we had where you brought in the human aspect of it and what's missing.

And I think everybody listening today is really going to benefit from hearing your perspective on these things in a way we haven't before. So, John Nostra, welcome to the Scott Adams School.

Thank you. What a pleasure to be here. I had some ideas about what to talk about and then that clip completely took me off path and I want to go down. I want to do something completely spontaneous. I warned you guys about this that I'm going to channel this down, but Scott in that clip said, "Gather around. Sit down. Gather around." That is the essence of technology today. And and I want to I want to talk about that just just briefly because the the notion of gather around actually can be hearkened to ancient um texts. The upanachads which are old Hindu spiritual texts. The upanachad is actually Sanskrit for sit up close.

To sit up close. Now what does that mean? Doctors walking down a hallway on rounds talking to one another. A guru sitting with a master talking about a particular issue. A group of kids sitting around a campfire. That is the essence of sit down, come up close. That's gather around. And what we're seeing today for the first time is there's a technological component to this. And and it's it's not fearful. It's that now we have the ability to interact with AI with large language models where we can have that that almost intimate conversation and that reflects very very much as to what Scott was saying is come on sit down gather around and I think that's the essence of where technology is going today. it becomes personal, it becomes connected, and probably the most interesting word here is iterative that we have an engaged conversation. So, I'm going to stop there and take a breath. Um,

well, don't take too long of a breath because you have so much to offer. And I think I also want to point out that you've written what over 500 articles for Psychology Today. Is that

Psychology Today? And uh when we first got on the phone um if you're old enough you remember Doogie Howouser. So you asked me if I know who Doogiehouser is and that you were writing medical papers for Harvard at 18 years old.

Yeah. Yeah. And you in that field until I was a smart alec I guess. You know I but it wasn't it wasn't because I was smart. It was because I was interested. It's because I had a real unique interest and connection with things like physiology and biology and stuff like that. So, so my early path took me to what was going to be medical school and um it was just too hard. You know, the nature of medicine today is very regurgitatory classes. Here's here's the cranial nerves, here's a book on anatomy. Now, next week we're going to have a test. So you memorize it and then we're gonna you're gonna regurgitate it or you're going to be a sponge and they squeeze it out after that test. So for me it it it didn't really align with my interests. I tend to be more of a creative or strategic thinker. So that's where I ended up working in in advertising and marketing um with a large uh advertising agency called Oglevie which is the

largest healthcare advertising agency. I focused on healthcare. So, I did that and um learned how to think and I think that that that is probably one of the defining elements and I'm going to jump back to that connectivity to what's going on here that when we sit up close what do we do? We think we think together and it's been said I think it's quite profound is as you think so you act as you act so you become. There's there's the magic, right? If we want to be a doctor or a lawyer or or a billionaire, you have to think it first.

It's the cognitive construct. And I want to I want to take that note and go back go back a few hundred years and kind of put this into a little bit of perspective because the word think is going to be real interesting and real important for us. So a few hundred years ago, a guy named Gutenberg did something that helped us think. He created a printing press. Now what did that printing press do? The printing press unlocked words so we could disseminate something like a book. Now in those days it was principally the Bible. Um but here's an interesting observation. Back in those days innovation technology if you will created something that there was no need for. So that's the first sort of paradoxical thing here. So I'm going to invent a book when no one can read. So how the heck do you do you manage that?

So that was sort of the first inflection point in the dissemination of thought and thinking and knowledge. So we unlock words took a few years and we see that with innovation all the time. Just because something is new and innovative doesn't mean it aligns to market adoption. So sometimes it takes time, sometimes it's immediate. Sometimes it takes time. Then then we move up in time and we get to this other thing called the internet. And what did the internet do? The internet and principally Google I guess if you really wanted to talk about search in it in its contemporary capacity. Google did something that was very similar to to Gutenberg.

Google unlocked facts and that was the second stage in the sort of thinking dynamic that it unlocked facts. Now that's the good news. The bad news is it unlocked facts in a way that is very um cold. It's not very interactive. It's very reaction. Here's the question. Here's the answer. It's transactional if you're looking for a word. So, Google is transactional. And you know, back in the days when you type up, you know, where's the best Mexican restaurant in Rumpson, New Jersey, you know, we all know it's Kasakcoma, by the way. But anyway, um it's it gives you a long complicated answer. You have to find the link. You got to back around. So that was the second sort of inflection point if you will. We unlock words and we unlock facts. And that was great. That really transformed the way we could think. But now what happens with these large language models that are really changing everything so so dramatically. What

large language models are doing is unlocking thought. So, so that's the transition, unlocking words, unlocking facts, and unlocking thought. The interesting thing about large language models is that it is an iterative dynamic and that our ability to engage with a large language model back and forth actually activates thought. And that's that's kind of where we are today. Now, what does that mean? How does that fit into the construct of things like the industrial age and the dig digital age and all that kind of stuff? I would argue that we're moving into a new domain and that is the domain of thought. That's why I call it the cognitive age and it goes right back to that fundamental reality written thousands of years ago in the upupanads that simply says as you think so you act as you act so you become. So when we talk about modern technology and we talk about come on everybody, let's gather around and

chat, that's as old as dirt. That's as old as humanity itself. Yet we see a new contemporary spin on that. So that's kind of what I've been thinking about recently.

So I what I've noticed in some of the writings about this sort of thing is it it seems to go in two directions. one is along the lines of what you said where you now have this personal companion that you can chat with and you can think with and you know have a conversation and and that sort of thing but it there's also the opposite which is I think the article I posted today talked about it as cognitive debt and that you you might be offloading your thinking to the AI and therefore not learning how to think. And I I have seen similar things across all of kind of education use cases for AI where it can be a great tutor and help you learn if you use it the right way, but it could also just give you all the answers and keep you from learning. And there's a big fear now that a lot of people are never going to learn the skills they have to know.

And on top of that, the the other thing I'll layer on and let you comment is um I've noticed or at least there's been people that have commented that AI kind of reflect back your level of thinking. That if you are really kind of dumb and ask it questions that kind of are what an ADIQ person might say, then it's going to kind of reflect that back at you and adapt to your level of thinking. But if you're more of a PhD super genius and you use all sorts of big words and you know it's different then it's going to reflect back that level of thinking or that level of conversation. So what do what do you think about all this? Is this going to make us all stupid?

This is you you you've you've touched on I'm going to reach over here. I'm going to grab something. So this is the shameless self-promotion of my book which is the borrowed mind.

It's coming out this week. Um, yes, we are doing a certain element of cognitive offloading and there's oh my god, there's so much to talk about in that in that question. So, let's let's back up and let's humanize this a little bit. Have you ever had a favorite teacher?

Absolutely. Everybody's had a favorite teacher. And interestingly, it's generally one or two people. Like, nobody has 10 favorite teachers. Nobody has, you know, a whole a whole load of famous teachers. It's usually one. It's often times a woman which which is because elementary educ education was sort of biased to more female but I find that interesting. Did what did that teacher do? What did she do for you? She got you. She got you. She delivered information in a way that was tuned to the creative frequency of your brain.

And I think that's something we have to consider. So, did the teacher rob your intelligence by pandering to your proclivities or insecurities? I don't think so. Now, that being said, we have to recognize that the nature of large language models are such that they kind of get from point A to point B. In other words, from question to answer. They go right to that point. They do the thinking for us. And that's that's a very dangerous situation that I've written extensively about. So what happens when you go when answers become instant?

What what is actually happening between point A and point B? That cognitive path, right? Well, it's the stumbles, it's the falls, it's the controversy, it's the the pauses of contemplation that occur. So what I think is happening is that we go from point A to point B with a large language model and we miss what's between the two points. Let me capture what's between the two points. It's a word we all know. It's a word we we we relish and I think that Scott kind of defined that in some ways. It's imagination. Imagination is that sort of rumbling, that pause, that confusion, that concern, that failure that came through point A to point B. So to answer your question, I think that that artificial intelligence and large language models are problematic, are curiously interesting. So can can I go down another path real quick, Erica?

just uh talking about technological augmentation. Everybody knows um the painting by Vermeere, the girl with the pearl earring. You know that wonderful painting. So um Vermeere used technological augmentation to do that painting. He used something called the camera obscura and he projected the image through light and then traced it on the wall. Okay. Was that technolog? It was technological augmentation in his day. Was it wrong? Here's another one that's really interesting. Norman Rockwell. Everybody knows Norman Rockwell, right?

He kind of has that quintessential American. You often see the uh the painting of Norman Rockwell um at the at the Thanksgiving table, the family with the turkey and or the cop with the kid who ran away from home. These are extraordinarily powerful moments uh that move us. Well, here's the secret to this. Norman Rockwell used a device called a Lucy. It's a device where he actually hired a photographer, created a set, took a picture, and then take that took that image and enlarged it and changed it using this mechanism called the Lucy, and then painstakingly traced it and colored it in. Next time you look at a a Norman Rockwell painting, take a close look. Take a close look at the It's almost like painting by numbers. Remember those things when we were kids, the painting by number thing? Norman Rockwell's art is very very specific because he was constrained by the technology he embraced.

And that's that's a really interesting dynamic. Constrained by the technology you embrace. Now, if you look at the Norman Rockwell, the more contemporary um his his most contemporary work, look at his signature. It's a stencil. I almost I almost want to curse here. This gets me so angry. He didn't even sign his name. The signature is an expression of our humanity, right? It's Picasso. It's whatever it is, right? It has a certain energy, a certain style. Well, what um he did is he actually took a stencil and made Norman Rockwell. Okay. Now, why I'm bringing this up is because this goes back to the earlier question. Is is it going to hurt us? Is it going to offload cognition? And I think that the answer is yes and no. Um, what I find interesting is the way Norman Rockwell responded when asked about the Lucy, the Lucy machine. Now, keep in mind, no one talks about the Lucy. That was his secret. If you go to the Norman Rockwell

Museum in Lennox, Massachusetts, don't ask them about the Lucy. They get very angry. They get very upset because it's like kind of like asking, "Did you write that essay or did Chat GPT write that essay?" It's that same social, cognitive, emotional dynamic that we're seeing play out here today. So what Norman Rockwell said I thought was really interesting. He said, "The Lucy is a horrible machine and I'd be lost without it." And I think to a certain that's the delicate balance that we're seeing with large language models. Um, do they cause cognitive offloading?

Well, I don't know Erica's cell phone number, right? I just type in her name. I don't I don't remember. Do I need to remember it? What is the appropriate level of cognitive offloading in our world? If a medical student needs to know the second metabolic intermediary in the KB cycle, which happens to be 16 fructose diphosphate, probably going to get an A on his on his biochemistry test in medical school. But does that make her or him a better clinician? These are very very complicated questions now.

Yeah. And it I mean I think it it will depend on on the type of thing you're talking about

answer, right? I mean it will depend. That's such an empty answer. Well, but what I mean is there's certain skills that I see like in the in the context of a doctor. I would want them to be able to diagnose me kind of right on the spot and not have to look up all the information or ask an LLM to figure out what my condition is. Right.

Let's let's talk about that because that that that in of itself is a very interesting thing. That's called a di that's called a differential diagnosis. So, um, a 65 year old guy goes to the emergency room who's sweaty and has chest pain radiating down his his left arm. Everybody want to do the diagnosis with me at the same time?

Heart attack. There you go. Bingo. Heart attack. That's right. That's that's a statistical guess. Okay. He also might have costondritis. He might have pericarditis. He might have a variety of things, but we often statistically guess into that into that spot. There was a study that showed how well LLMs did, doctors did, and doctors using an LLM do

in looking at clinical scenarios. And they found something very interesting here. All three of those constructs did the same. They all got 76% correct. Doctor alone, LLM, or an LLM and a doctor combined, which I thought was really interesting. But here's here's the the interesting thing, and this is where it gets to the point where you're worried about about this idea. Well, I want the doctor right there to make the diagnosis for me. If you look at the clinical chain of reasoning, in other words, don't tell me you had a heart attack. Okay, doctor, tell me the five reasons why the ST segment is elevated on my EKG. That's a classic sign. It's called a STEMI.

Classic sign of a heart attack. Tell me the five reasons why that might be elevated. Pericarditis, early repolarization, ventricular aneurysm, you know, there there's there's a list. Most clinicians will not get that. So, here's the challenge. Sometimes augmenting clinical thinking and reasoning is very, very helpful. So, I think that we're going to see, you know, the interesting thing here is when my wife comes back to from the pediatrician, I ask her, "What did the doctor say?" You know, and um she usually gives me an answer. Oh, we got a prescription. Everything's fine.

Tomorrow, the question is, "What did the computer say?" But that's not a full sentence. That's actually there's a comma there. So, the rest of that question is really very telling. It's what did the doctor do what did the computer say, comma, and what did the doctor do? And it's that sort of cognitive functional dance that's going to be very very powerful. So when I go into the emergency room um and they say I have a heart attack, my differential diagnosis should be scrubbed analytically by an AI. So it's not one versus the other. That's one of the pitfalls that we find with AI is it becomes a zero sum game.

It's they win, we lose. Yeah. And I what I've also noticed is that at least in my use of AI, I found that it's very useful, but it's also based on my expertise. Like I know what right I know what questions to ask to get good answers. And I think from everything I've read about it, people who don't have a lot of expertise don't get good answers a lot of the time. And it's because they don't know what questions to ask and they don't know how to guide the AI in the right way. So it seems to me like we do need to maintain some ability for people to gain enough expertise to control and guide the AI at least until they don't need people anymore.

Well, also Owen, the other thing I want to chime in because I see it in the chat is that a lot of us don't trust doctors anymore. So do they have an agenda? You know, do they have a political issue? Are they jaded? Like who knows? So, do you trust your doctor? You know, can you? A lot of us just don't. But then I I'm in the middle, again, I'm going to use my Libra reference where I'm always in the middle of two things where I'm just like, well, do I trust AI? Isn't that being programmed also? And how do I know that it isn't skewed a certain way?

So, then I trust nothing. But that's where I find myself. I trust nothing. Here's a question. We often look at things like hallucinations. I see that in the chat. That's a very common sometimes they're called confabulations. Um, but we look at that. We look at bias. Do do LLM is claude bias? Is Grock bias? Does chat GPT have a have a bias baked into it? Well, what about the doctor? You know, Erica, you mentioned that and I think that's so true that maybe we should worry about the human bias in a lot of our information. So yeah, you know, AI is biased, but but I think that that AI is very helpful to me um because I'm a geek. I was in the car the other day and I was I was actually having a conversation. I I think I was using chat GPT and I wanted the model to teach me about the strange qualities of subatomic particles.

Um, what what I find what I I know I know I'm a complete geek, but they ran out of words. Like when when when you had these quirks, these funky quirks, well, they ran out of words to describe them. So they started using words like beauty truth charm upness downness to describe them. So So I had a really good discussion with with AI about something I know very little about. So yes, you you need to be a master of your domain, but you don't have to be a master of the knowledge domain. So I think that that's very helpful for me.

Now, I want to get to something because I know we've gone like almost a half hour into this mumbo jumbo.

I quick just wanted to, if you don't mind, ask Sergio and Marcela if they have a question at this point for you before we move on.

You thought Brian talked a lot. Now you I mean you can't you guys can't even shut me up. So yes,

I want you to keep going to Brian is my confident brother by the way. We we get our heads together and like a little sparks fly.

Anyway, yes, please ask some questions. Surgeon. Hey John. Yes, I I I checked your stuff yesterday. I was starting to learn more about what you do

and um I love that you are focused on the health uh part you know and because that's a very important uh um aspect for me always to know how are we maximizing our doctors and um and you already answered a lot of those questions uh that was great um Brian Romeli gave us this reframe right that instead of calling it AI calling it IA right intelligence amplifier there. And um I love that reframe. Uh I wanted to ask you uh I always tell people to not get into conversations with AI like chats back and forth because I personally feel like it's getting me um like uh Owen was saying, he tries to agree with me a lot and uh and then it takes me down different paths. So what I do is I just dictate to it.

I just put a little microphone and I say a voice memo. I don't I don't allow it to say like stop, you know, let me and I just and she answers to me. My question is uh when it comes to to health, right? And um and the the mental health part of it

of uh talking to an AI like this um can you also agree that some people are more susceptible to that

and because I am that's why because I know I am I avoid it. Boom. You are so spot. I'm a sucker for AI because, you know, I type in a sentence and then Claude or or or whomever writes back, "Oh, John, that is such an interesting observation, right?" And then I'm I'm stuck. I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I'm really is that really? I'm so smart." So, you got it. Um, in in my book, I talk about AI in three contexts. Um, the first is the promise. The second is the peril because there's real risk and I'll get back to that. And the third is the path that we need to understand how to use it. You know, the best use of a hammer is from a skilled craftsman. And I think we need to to understand that. So, number one, yes, AI is insidious.

It's trained to say things that you like. For example, if you've ever used any of those uh you submit your picture into these apps and they give you an avatar, you know, the avatar always has nicer teeth, is a little skinnier, the hair is I mean, it's like what's going on here, right? They're trained to give you output that you like. And and I think that large language models are very similar to that unless you can provoke them. Unless you say, you know, steelman this idea, pressure test this idea. I want you to take on the role of a contrarian and I want you to look at this idea and give me all the downside to it. So, we have to be very careful because because they are insidious. Now, with respect to um to psychiatry and psychology, there's been a lot of action there. I think that probably um the fringe cases you know we have a normal distribution of bell curve those 10% on either side are vulnerable.

So let's say I told told a an LLM I'm feeling a little blue today and then all of a sudden we start falling down the rabbit hole. Oh, what shade of blue? Well, it's really dark. Oh, how dark is it? Well, it's it's a black hole of of conscious awareness. You know, whatever that is. So we have to be careful about that. Most normal people can tolerate that. In fact, I would argue that that's the friction of life. And that friction is what drives the process of understanding. It's so when I said getting to A to B, getting from A to B with an LLM is instant, right? It just goes from one to the other. Getting from A to B for a human is often toil, controversy, struggle, joy, wisdom, insight, all sorts of things. But um I think that we have to be careful with large language models because they um they are now what did Brian Brian flipped it, right? AI IA intelligence amplified.

I'm going to give you mine because I disagree with Brian on this point. I think that a intelligence amplified is not intrinsic to the model. I think that's a result of the model. So I can say I can call a hammer house amplified, builder amplified, right? Because it's just going to help me, you know, whatever. I think that, and this is really a bit controversial, I don't think that artificial intelligence is intelligence at all. I think it's anti-intelligence. I think it's anti-intelligence. Now, let's unpack this a little bit because it's a little complicated. Um, what does an apple look like to a large language model? What does an apple look like?

Well, let's talk about what it looks like to us. Okay, we see an apple in three dimensions, right? Three spatial dimensions. Okay, pretty simple. There's the apple in my hand. Some smarty pants might include time, but that's a very interesting thing, and we'll get to that later. Do you know that large language models don't have any idea what time is? They are a temporal. They don't exist in time.

But when they see an apple, the old models from a few months ago would see that model in 12,288 dimensions. What the hell does that even mean? Right? The new Frontier models, the new chat GPTs actually look at the Apple in 25,000 dimensions. Now the reason I'm I'm talking about this is because I want you to be confused deliberately. The perceptual domain, the cognitive capability of a large language model is vastly different than humans. When we think of an apple, we think of three dimensions. We think of let's see apple a day keeps the doctor away. We think of Apple computer. We think of Apple Garden of Eden, right? Adam and Eve. We think of about 25 linguistic associations combined with three spatial dimensions.

That's it. But an LLM looks at an apple in 25,000 dimensions. Now, so we live in three dimensions. Sometimes people talk about multiple dimensions called hyper cubes, which are really cool mathematical structures. Sometimes people who study string theory get really wacky and they look at string theory in the context of 11 dimensions, which blows their mind. 11 dimensions. As a human, we have no ability to conceptually understand that. And what I think that the difference is is that AI is anti-intelligence. Number one, it doesn't think like we do. It's really important that that um actually took some notes to try to get this right. We live in an autobiographical state. We know who we are. We have a stable identity. We have a great sense of continuity. We know who we were yesterday and we kind of know who we're going to be tomorrow, right? That's continuity. LLMs have no continuity. You turn them off, you turn them on. That's

that's the way they are. They don't live in time, we live in time. And and when you combine these things together, I've written extensively about that. It's actually anti-intelligence. They the way LLMs process information is antithetical to human thought. Antithetical to human thought. So it's important to recognize the difference. Now what does that really even mean? How do we put this together? We all have two eyes. Why do we have two eyes? If we have

depth perception. Bingo. Parallax view. Depth perception. It's the difference between the two eyes that allow us to see the world uniquely. And it's my contention that what we're seeing with artificial intelligence is the combination of anti-intelligence and human intelligence. The combination of extraordinary computational brilliance from a large language model and our human timedriven, biographical driven, experienced driven, emotional driven dynamic gives us two fields of vision. It's like cognitive parallax. So I think that when we when we think about about AI, we have to celebrate the fact that it's faking different. The computational capabilities of AI are not good or bad.

It's not zero and one. It's not win lose. It's they're functionally different. And I think that's a difference we should celebrate. Humanity is different. Amen. But AI is different. And this idea that we make humans more like AI or we make AI more like humans, I think is fundamentally flawed at a very very base level. This transhuman mumbo jumbo. And I think that's kind of one of the big issues. And that gets back to the earlier question about psychiatry and psychology. We have to recognize that these models are in fact models. They really do find the next word. Stokiatric parrots as they're sometimes called. And here's an interesting thing. When we ask an LLM a question, they already assume that there's an answer.

Take a step back and let's think about what this even means. They assume that there's a cross word puzzle and all it has to do is fill in the words. That's the way an LLM thinks. Even the smartest LLMs, we as humans don't process information that way. We don't think about the answer that exists at the end of the journey. We think about the process that gets us to a place that may not exist, that may take us to a new cognitive construct. So all these things are kind of you know there's a lot going on here and and in the final analysis I don't want to say that AI is bad. I think the in the fundamental analysis AI is anti-intelligence antithetical to human thought and it it lives as sort of a cognitive parallax related to depth.

Think about the intellectual and cognitive depth that we can have when we leverage an LLM. And we haven't even gotten to education yet because I think education, while precarious, is still a a wonderful opportunity. And I'm the dad. I homeschool my kids with my wife. So, we do use AI and we we look at, you know, good oldfashioned things like reading a book, but we also use technology, too. Just like, you know, just like Vermeere and and just like um our other friend, the painter, who said that I'd be lost without it. I think it's a true a true statement. Mhm.

Rockwell. Yeah. Um John, just want to cl to end clarify. Um um Brian Romelli, I think I may misspoke. He didn't say uh intelligence um

amplify. He's intelligence amplifier like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I wanted to make sure that uh to clarify that he meant that it's a tool for people. So he's actually in your

Yeah. I mean domain. You know, a couple things. Intelligence amplifier. I think that some of the things that AI actually does is outside the domain of humans. So, does it amplify or does it contribute new perspectives? And and this is where it gets into trouble. Guess do you ever drive down the road and you see a big water truck and it says non-potable? It says not fit for human consumption. Right? What what am I talking about here? Um I believe that large language models, the computational brilliance of these models, albeit antithetical to human cognition, is so deep, so multi-dimensional that we don't even understand it. We we do not have the capacity to understand what this 10,000 dimension articulation of quantum physics is looking at gravity. and it it exists in this little packet that it's unfit for human consumption. That's a problem, you know.

Now, now there's lots of things. I mean, if we look at a CD, we can't read a CD with our mind, with our head, right? We need a machine to read it. But I think AI creates a new domain of knowledge. And unless you recognize that dem that knowledge is different than humans is antithetical to humans, I think you're going to get going to run into a a problem there. So, um, you know, Brian, Brian and I align on almost everything, but I really kind of think about that AI is is fundamentally different. And here here's the question, and a lot of people default to this. They say, "Oh, it's just a tool. It's how you use it."

Right? That's it. Everybody says that. And I think that's categorically wrong because when I use a hammer, I can hammer the nail. I can put the hammer down and I can walk away. I no longer carry that hammer with me. But here's the question. Can you unthink a thought you shared with a large language model? It becomes a little creepy there, right? I mean, it's it's, you know, we all have a voice in our head. Sometimes it's it's problematic, you know? Sometimes it drives us into into into some issues, but for the most part, that voice in our head is a pretty good thing.

Interestingly, the voice in our head never changes. That voice in your head is the same when you were five than when you're 55. It's a it's a curious voice that speaks in your head that is an amazingly intimate and personal dynamic. I think that we're actually seeing the emergence of not an inner monologue, but an inner dialogue. So when I have those conversations with with with chat GPT, I'm having an iterative dialogue, which is a prehuman pre-reality construct. You could almost think of it as a dress rehearsal for life. So I got on chat GPT and said, "Well, I have to tell my wife that we're not going on that vacation to um you know, to Belmar, New Jersey this year."

So I could rehearse that with her with with with ChatGpt. That is a very intimate private dialogue. Powerful. Definitely powerful, but it's also problematic because in certain instances it could you it could drive you down the rabbit hole of pathology. But it also can kindle the dynamic of genius. And and that's the duality that really kind of flips me out. We know that introspection is at the heart of transformation. We know that from from um from reading the Bible. We we know that that sometimes you need to be alone. You need to think. Many many great thinkers found the answers come when they're quiet and alone. And that level of introspection I think kindles a certain level of what what I I I often refer to it as as geniuses are birthright and mediocrity is self-imposed. that I believe that our cognitive capabilities when kindled, when tapped into, when managed appropriately yield really, really interesting things.

I think that that AI may in fact be a surrogate, be a partner in kindling that reality. That kind of flips people out, but um it it's not it's not that. Look, Michael Jordan was a genius, okay? He did it by bouncing a basketball. And that was in in in many ways that was introspective. That was meditative. We often refer to that as being in the zone. How about the aha moment? These are experiences that we've all had. And I think that there may be an opportunity to leverage that unique internal dialogue, not monologue, with artificial intelligence and large language models to find new levels of cognitive engagement. So, it's we are in the we are in the abyss right now. We're in the grand cognitive abyss. And I just think it's important that we recognize that it's very easy to defer thinking to the machine. And when you defer thinking to the machine, you're just not cognitive offloading. It's just not that I'm

letting it remember my wife's telephone number. It's that I am changing that. Now, one could argue that it makes it efficient, but I think that's a real risk and something we have to manage. Yeah, I mean I I I worry about that disconnect and all the things that we do in our quiet time and you know even like especially as a child I think about the kids today. They don't have any quiet time generally speaking because they're being fed something all the time and they're always having a screen put in front of them

and it's like their playdates now with friends are just on screens together in the same room and there's you know when you think back I mean I I mean my life you know playing with Barbies and playing outside and creating a world for these things and pretending you're you know in an army fort and what happens and like that's just not happening now. And I think and I think that if you already had those things and now you're an adult, I mean, you stop creating as an adult also, like you're you're still destroying everything moving forward.

Here's my completely unscientific and controversial take. I think that we all have the capacity for this hyper experience, for this cognitive zone, right? being in the zone, experiencing the aha moment. When we when when I ask you to draw a picture of a genius, most of you will scribble Albert Einstein or you'll write that name down because he's the prototypical genius in many instances. Um, and that that um that perspective of the genius is a smart man sitting in a room getting the right question correct all the time, right?

That that ain't genius. In fact, if you look at Einstein, much of Einstein's early work was was where he won the Nobel Prize. Photoelectric effect, relativity, general relativity. Those things happened in his 20s and and for the rest of his life, he kind of languished in Princeton, another Jersey spot we're going to mention. But but he did have some interesting work. But I think we've all had moments of enlightenment, moments of transcendence, moments of sort of an experiential element. Now with kids, my contention is oftentimes kids find something that they're good at like and it's not it's not like good at math. It's good at knowing every car on the road. That's a Chevy. That's a Tesla. You know, they have this this soantlike capability. We should nurture that because that soantlike capability is in essence the genius experience. And when you find that genius experience, you discover the joy of thought. Remember we

started our conversation today on as you think so you act, as you act so you become and the cognitive age. I think that that's something that we see with kids today that we can nurture that ability to find that spark and we're developing that spark in new and interesting ways because if if my son wants to learn gravity from Carl Sean, I can I can do that. I can have an LLM create a Carl Sean like um like teacher and when that happens I think we see we see we see very very magical changes. These things are tuned to the creative frequency of your brain.

So I think there's a lot of opportunity you know but look um you you're going fast you know you're traveling at the speed of thought and that's problematic. There was a study um in Africa that used an LLM to teach math to children and because the math was tuned to their frequency. Let me back up and and can I keep going on this or am I am I down the dark rabbit hole here?

Well, I I want to make sure Marcella gets in too because so much has been said so she might have a question thus far. Well, you you remind me of Richard Feman when Richard Feman talked about learning and how like you can learn

um you can learn words, you can learn this is the name of the tree, the scientific name, but do you really know what it does?

Yeah. And what I like about AI though is that like you said, it's a tool in a way that you can either just let it take you

or you can drive it. Yeah. Where you can have Carl Sean and all that. U spot on 100%. You know, but here's here's the interesting thing and let's go back to like 30,000 foot. Another comment that I always get in trouble for, but I'll I'll say it any knowledge is dead. knowledge is dead. And and people look at me and say, "What the heck are you talking about?" Well, if I want to cook a sule, okay, I'm no chef, but if I want to cook a sule, I go into our kitchen and we have that book, Julia Child, The Art of French Cooking, a lot of a lot of, you know, people have it, they never use it because it's too darn hard, but they it's it's kind of they got it as a gift or something. So, on page 172 is the recipe for sule. And they tell me first thing they say is make a sache.

I don't even know what a sache is. This was not written for me. It was not written for me. Now today, if I want to learn how to do a sule, cook a sule. I go to a large language model and I say, I want you to cook a sule as good as Julia Child. But I want you to tell me how to do it and make it funny. use analogies to automotives and write it for a man who's never cooked in his life. So that comes down it it actually collapses a wave function. In physics we talk about that that superp position that knowledge that thing of knowledge how to cook a sule make it automotive funny for a guy who's never cooked has never existed before.

It it exists nowhere but it happens to come down to your computer to you uniquely to you. That's why knowledge in the traditional sense is dead. Julia Child's book is a dust collector because today we could interpret that in the context of my needs. It's user or more specifically learner centric. Well, let's go back to that crazy teacher. Your favorite teacher. She put you at the center. It was learner centric. So large language models can teach me the way I want to learn. So my girls had to study the Krebs cycle. The Krebs cycle is a metabolic pathway that biology students always have to learn and it's a pain in the neck. But I had chat GPT write a poem about it and it was memorable and they learned it that way. So again, it's not just an extension of what I know as a navigator because I as a navigator don't know what 16 fructosephosphate is.

Chat GTP does. And when it teaches me in the context of poetry, holy crap, it's transformative.

So if I want you to jump in too in case if knowledge is dead, does that mean knowledge work is dead? And is AI going to be taking all of our jobs? Well, Brian Brian in his recent post would tell you that he's developing the zero employee company.

So, um I think that again I'm going to hedge on this and I'm going to say I don't I don't think so. I think that that that the blacksmith died in the industrial revolution, right? when we when we change to steel and cars and and that doesn't necessarily mean that the knowledge worker is dead. I I'll give you a couple examples. Um when I think it was was it Matthew Brady, the guy who did the Civil War photography, the black and white Civil War photography, I think his Brady was his last name. Anyway, when photography emerged in the United States and Prince and around the world, portraiture did not go away.

It got bigger. It grew and grew and grew and it created this thing called selfies. A billion dollar industry of selfies. Similarly, when I think it was Boris Spaskey played IBM's Deep Blue in chess and lost, what happened to chess? Was chess finished? Did everybody just take their boards and go home and go away? No. Chess, and that's 20 years ago, chess has never been more popular than it is today. So, my my contention is that that we don't cut the pie. We don't cut the pizza into smaller and smaller pieces, leaving less for us. the pie grows and when that pie grows it develops new areas for humanity. Now, you know, now now we're, you know, it's interesting because innovation has always had the back side of the coin. What's on the other side of the innovation coin?

Obsolescence. When our phone is obsolete, what do we do? We get a new one. When our car, washing machine, microwave, whatever it is, when it breaks, generally we get a new one because innovation and obsolescence go handinand glove, same side of the coin. For the first time in history, human cognition itself is on the obsolescence chopping block. That's what flips people out. But I

I think it's also a concern when you think of just the range of IQs, right? like because there are certain people that have the cognitive ability to maybe get to that high-end that LLM can't do and they can be useful and maybe amplified and you know be 10 times more productive but then there might be half the population that LLMs could just replace and you don't need them anymore and there's no jobs left for them to do once you bring robots into the picture too.

Again, I struggle with that because that is a very number one it's kind of zero sum win lose. Mhm.

So, so the so the camera replaced the portrait artist. Maybe, maybe it's that its craft is replaced by cognition. You know, a lot of people can visualize images, but they can't articulate them visually. They can't draw a lightning bolt tied in a knot, whatever the the enigmatic image may be, because they don't have that ability. Now artists because of the prompt can articulate through words ideas that never ever ever had a chance of seeing the light of day. So I tend to be much more optimistic. I don't think that the dumb people are going to go away because AI will replace them. I I just don't see it. I struggle with that because it's definitely scary. It definitely flips me out. But I do see a glimmer of hope down the road.

Okay. Thanks. I appreciate it. Well, I have to go. I apologize to everyone, but I need to

Thanks, Owen. We'll see you tomorrow. Great conversation. All right. Thank you. Um, yeah. So, I we we only have about five minutes left.

I've got 20 minutes left, though. I can't You can't I'm just kidding. Um, first I want to tell you the chat is very enthralled. Like, they're really enjoying this conversation. Um, it is so interesting, you guys. I told you, right? It's like just such it's like things that we don't normally talk about with AI. We always talk about what can AI do and look at what it's doing and look at the thing it made. But you know I I like this um this in between space

a lot. What is AI doing to us? We spend a lot of time talking about computation and and model size and and bits and bites if you will. But I think we have to be very careful because because the the nature of AI AI is actually bending thought. Bending thought. It's bending the way we think. And we just can't we just can't say okay never mind. We'll just do it and see what happens. Albert Einstein said that gravity is not a force. He says that it actually is time space bent. It's the bending of space. And I argue that we're seeing a bending of cognition in a se similar kind of way.

I've written about that in psychology today a couple weeks ago. So I challenge everybody to go out there and you know and don't go to the link where it says the the digital self. Click on that on psychology today and it'll give you just a laundry list of my articles. Read the headlines and the subheads. Don't read the articles. It's that's too much. It'll make you crazy. But read the articles and and find what strikes your imagination and um and send me a note. I mean, I'm more than happy to discuss this. For us, this ultimately is a cognitive campfire. This is what you guys are doing now. You're letting us quote unquote sit up close. You're letting us, you know what Scott said, gather around. We're gathering around the cognitive campfire and we're discussing these things. and we're discussing them in a very human way. And I think that's one thing that that that LLMs don't have. They don't have that

temporality and all that kind of stuff. So, I can go down that rabbit hole a lot.

I agree. I feel it like I I feel that with the AI. So, I I I am going to just kind of bring us to a close here, but I have to say um I posted your uh handle on Twitter for everybody. I asked them, you know, if if they give you a follow to let you know what their favorite part about today was. And I think you have a lot of new very interested people. Um, some of them even went to purchase your book and they see that they have to wait for it.

Yeah. Tell us about your book. You guys, as usual, you're ahead of the curve. So, you're kind of like, wait, you know, but it's coming.

It's on Amazon. Is that where it is? It'll be on Amazon. Probably Kindle will come out first and then and then the hard copy and paperback soon.

Is it? It should be out on Kindle this week. The the pre pre-order should be out.

Um, but we really need to dig into that. There's a lot of interesting things there. You know, the the subhead of the book is reclaiming human thought in the age of AI. Reclaiming human thought.

Yes. Will you come back on with us, John? I'd love to. I'd love to. They they love they love this conversation.

Sergia. Oh yes. Um John what you said that is between A and B that's imagination and that's uh what we are missing a lot and and what Marcela said about fineman and how words can be limiting us too

like words are limiting how we see things and AI doesn't have that limit yet you know it has all this so it is uh thank you for for for

pinpointing all that because like Erica was saying nobody is doing a lot of that right now understanding how humans are going to be affected by how we, you know, we are using it. So, thank you for that.

No. Oh, it's it's my pleasure. And these are questions. They're not answers. Right.

You know what? I'll I'll end with this. You know, we talk about the prompt. It's not the output of those darn LLMs. It's what Voltater said. Voltater said, you don't judge a person by their answers. You judge them by the questions they ask. And that's where we are today. We ask great questions, Marcella.

I love it. I hope. Yeah. Can you guys tell that John's from New Jersey? Like, he's my kind of vibe, right?

Do I talk like Jersey or do I do any of that? I talk like Jersey. Hey, forget about it.

But everybody loves this so much. And they're saying like, "What a great way to start the week and that this was so interesting. Someone's going to replay it for their husband tonight." Um, yeah. So, and this will get replayed a lot. You guys share it with your friends. And John will come back and Brian, you guys, John's friend Brian that we love, I think is coming on with us on Thursday. So, it will be interesting. I'm sure John, you'll get in touch with Brian. Tell him to watch today's show and then we can talk on Thursday after we've had time to marinate about what happened here today. So, um, I always stop sharp at the top of the hour so our guests know exactly what's happening. Um, so I just wanted to thank you again and we'll be in touch and I hope that this was a good experience for you, John, and that you saw the value in coming to the Scott Adams School.

Can't wait to do it again. I think you you're doing something special here. The Scott Adams School is the future and I look forward to participating.

Thank you so much. Closing sip you guys to Scott and to Shelly to Scott. Go be useful.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Episode 3090 - The Scott Adams School 02/09/26"?

Scott Adams (Guest), John Nosta (Guest), Erica (Guest), Marcella (Guest), Sergio (Guest), Owen Gregorian (Guest).

What is "Episode 3090 - The Scott Adams School 02/09/26" about?

The Scott Adams School session focuses on fostering a community for learning and discussion, highlighting the importance of connection and growth among participants. The session features introductions of various attendees and invites everyone to participate in a shared experience, referred to as the "simultaneous sip," while emphasizing a lighthearted and engaging atmosphere.

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

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including John Nosta, Scott Adams, Psychology Today, Brian Romeli, Oglvie, Albert Einstein. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Episode 3090 - The Scott Adams School 02/09/26"?

The episode runs 1 h; the transcript is about 10,031 words in 114 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 9, 2026.