What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert? • Hacker News Board

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#131

Post by kayodelycaon » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

selfmodruntime wrote: post #64

kayodelycaon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree with this view. The problem I see Dilbert running into is the comic previously was aimed at corporate culture and specific jobs and stereotypes. In a way, it was punching up at more powerful, impersonal forces. Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized. Despite these rather nasty policies governments and companies have…

> Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized. I don't feel like this is true. The comic where one character identified as "white" isn't punching down at black people. There are no people of color who identify as white. He is punching up at insane corporate rules that make the color of a person's skin important when it comes to hiring: a…

The issue isn't so much with Dilbert as the context Dilbert is in.

Let me try to explain this.

The sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" joke is a good example. The structure of the joke is Y is something no one will seriously identify as. This means "X = Black, Y = White" pattern matches.

For the LGBT "context", the common usage of sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" translates to "I don't think transgender identities are valid". The Non-LGBT context doesn't assign a specific meaning to the phrase.

This sets up a scenario where one group has a rule saying "X -> Y" and another has "X -> ?".

And here's where the problem comes in. Comic strips have limited bandwidth and they rely on context to be understood.

So when Dilbert says "I am Black identifying as White", the LGBT context immediately translates this to Y, wherewas the Non-LGBT context does a page fault and looks elsewhere for what it could mean.

In isolation, this looks like LGBT people are being overly sensitive, but every human is "overly sensitive" in some way. We all operate in our own context based on what we've experienced.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#132

Post by jrockway » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #11

AinderS wrote: post #4

Simple. Workplace complaints and management priorities have changed, and Dilbert followed. When Dilbert started, the government wasn't yet training employees how to "interrupt whiteness" [1], or Coca-Cola how to "be less white" [2], or Cigna simply forbidding hiring whites [3], nor did academia require mandatory diversity pledges for new hires and promotions [4]. Dilbert is doing what we are told art is supposed to d…

It really makes me wonder what the common experience is for others not just in tech but Corporate America in general. I myself have run into anti-white and anti-male phenomena, unconscious bias pseudoscience training, diversity pledges, and so on, as have now others in my peer group. Dilbert's commentary has so far been entirely appropriate based on my experience, hence it's puzzling to me when people think there's s…

I've taken unconscious bias training. I thought it was very good. I remember catching myself in some meeting talking over a quiet woman who had probably been wanting to talk for quite a while. My brain remembered the training, I shut up, and let her participate in the meeting as an equal. Without the training, I would probably be silently making people miserable. Now I don't do that, as much.

You use the word "pseudoscience" to describe the training, so it's unlikely that you're receptive to this anecdote, but just wanted to share my perspective. Being cognizant of your flaws is the first step in fixing them. I really don't think some training along the lines of "hey, you might be doing this without noticing" is the worst thing in the world. At worst, you waste 45 minutes you were probably going to spend arguing with people on HN. At best, you might make yourself more enjoyable to work with. To me, it's worth the gamble!

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#133

Post by dghlsakjg » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #55

oneoff786 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consultant who sees a lot of different big company cultures, and even done some work specifically on diversity stuff: They’re overblown. I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California. I’m sure people will be eager to show their anecdotes otherwise but I’m not really interested in that.

>I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California That's cold comfort to people living in california, like scott adams.

The man hasn't worked a corporate job since the 90s by his own account. His perception of the current corporate culture seems to be based on media reports and grievance anecdotes.

It is VERY clear that he spends most of his time at home making content. This isn't a dig, this is an observation about the amount of time he spends live-streaming from his home.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#134

Post by woodruffw » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

cnasc wrote: post #80

gingerrr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

....being worried about societal change is definitionally conservatism, did you mean something else by that?

The United States used to have a strong union culture in various industries, which has been worn down tremendously over the past century. Throughout that time many people in various places on the left end of the political spectrum have expressed their concern about that change. Is that conservatism?

> Is that conservatism?

No, because it doesn't rest on the fundamental assumption that the past was right, nor the corresponding political will to return to "the way things were."

History is a record of advances and regressions. Referencing history does not fundamentally result in a conservative political outlook; what makes an outlook conservative is the one-dimensional (and frequently reactionary) analysis that things must go back to how they were, or as closely as possible.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#135

Post by the_only_law » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

PopAlongKid wrote: post #117

I have long viewed Mike Judge[0] as the anti-Scott Adams. He works with many of the same topics but the result is far, far funnier. And he does not try to shove any particular political point of view at the expense of basic humor. In reviewing Idiocracy, Salon stated, "Judge's gimlet eye is so ruthless that at times his politics seem to border on South Park libertarianism".[73] A writer for the libertarian magazine R…

> And he does not try to shove any particular political point of view at the expense of basic humor

Have you seen the new Beavis and Butt-Head movie, it was very much more explicit in making lazy political jokes, albeit mostly for one filler scene.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#136

Post by Kiro » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #38

He's gone off the deep end. I've seen the same happen with some friends and wrote about it, it's a sad thing when formerly intelligent human beings start losing it and fail to recover only to sink further and further into their own version of reality.

This is a perfect example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31239403

A highly respected and intelligent individual being delusional and refusing to acknowledge it.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#137

Post by Chris2048 » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

MrMan wrote: post #79

nmilo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who the hell said that was the real problem in academia, as if it was the only problem there? Are we not allowed to talk about a problem if some greater problem also exists?

complaining about something that makes little or no difference compared to real problems makes one look petty and weak-minded even after we steel-man your less-wrong opinions

You could just as well be describing "micro-aggressions" which are literally small and/or petty transgressions. Would you agree no one should talk about those too?

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#138

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

romwell wrote: post #28

AinderS wrote: post #4

Simple. Workplace complaints and management priorities have changed, and Dilbert followed. When Dilbert started, the government wasn't yet training employees how to "interrupt whiteness" [1], or Coca-Cola how to "be less white" [2], or Cigna simply forbidding hiring whites [3], nor did academia require mandatory diversity pledges for new hires and promotions [4]. Dilbert is doing what we are told art is supposed to d…

Ah yes, diversity statments are the real problem in academia. Not, say, 10:1 PhD student to position ratio. Or exploitation. Or the visa slavery (accept all the crap, or get kicked out of the country you've been toiling for over the course of 10 years). Or $50K/yr being acceptable research professor's salary. Or the disgusting proportion of adjunct positions used as full-time. Or ( gasp ) actual lack of diversity. No…

[deleted]

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#139

Post by biophysboy » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

Scott Adams is yet another one of the media “renegades”, who posture themselves as a secret source of knowledge, rather than a bad actor feeding on widespread doubt and distrust. Typically, their content is misanthropic (aren’t the sheeple libs stupid?) and hyper-focused on ephemeral culture war noise (look at what libs of TikTok found!).

These people fixate so much on narrow issues that they totally miss larger cultural trends that refute their apocalyptic fears: Biden won, Eric Adams won, the SF education board was recalled, wokeness/CRT bills passed in many red states, roe v wade overturned, etc etc etc.

Adams is a fucking idiot. Most of the “intellectual dark web” are as well.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#140

Post by bena » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

SeanLuke wrote: post #8

h2odragon wrote: post #2

Remember "Doonesbury." Might've been funny once but degraded into political polemics for the last decade or more. Once you've got an audience the temptation to use their trust to persuade them of, well, anything; seems to be hard to resist. Moreso when you have opinions that others emphatically do not share. I can think of dozens of "liberal comics" that never tried to be funny, that were merely political propaganda…

> Might've been funny once but degraded into political polemics for the last decade or more. What are you talking about? Doonesbury has been a proudly, and heavily, political comic since the 1960s.

This is akin to complaining about Rage Against the Machine getting political