Scott Adams has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Scott Adams has died

#241

Post by the_af » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #216

mrweasel wrote: post #182

I loved Dilbert, having worked for more than one Dilbert-like company the humor frequently resonated with me. How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. Was this opinions he'd always had, but suppressed, did he somehow become radicalized or was it perhaps medically induced, e.g. a stroke or something. It was incredibly sad to see him throw away his life's wo…

> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. Was this opinions he'd always had, but suppressed, They weren't surpressed; he was very open about them from very early on in his career as a comic artist; they were central to his “origin story” and were woven directly into the comics. Its just, for a while, other aspects of his still-recent experience in corpora…

Were there early signs? I don't know of them, but to be honest, I mostly "knew" him through Dilbert. When he turned out to be a bigot it was a disappointing surprise to me.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#242

Post by IAmBroom » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

ryandvm wrote: post #33

The entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale. To go from a brilliant satirist to becoming terminally online and just completely falling off the far right cliffs of insanity is incredibly sad. And unfortunately, this is plight is not uncommon. It is incredibly dangerous to make politics part of your identity and then just absolutely bathe yourself in a political media echo chamber.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#243

Post by throw4436y54 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

jchallis wrote: post #188

Scott Adams died today. I want to acknowledge something complicated. He always felt culturally like family to me. His peaks—the biting humor about corporate absurdity, the writing on systems thinking and compounding habits, the clarity about the gap between what organizations say and what they do—unquestionably made me healthier, happier, and wealthier. If you worked in tech in the 90s and 2000s, Dilbert was a shared…

This comment reminds me of when I talked to a few Chinese friends about their thoughts on Mao. They all acknowledged the failed policies which led to famine, yet they also admired that he basically gave Chinese people their pride back.

They related him to an uncle figure who became a mean drunk.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#244

Post by LiquidSky » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #182

I loved Dilbert, having worked for more than one Dilbert-like company the humor frequently resonated with me. How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. Was this opinions he'd always had, but suppressed, did he somehow become radicalized or was it perhaps medically induced, e.g. a stroke or something. It was incredibly sad to see him throw away his life's wo…

>How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand.

The key is that it seemed like he was Dilbert when he actually always thought of himself as Dogbert.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#245

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

munksbeer wrote: post #239

Waterluvian wrote: post #144

I got to interact with Scott just once on Twitter. I shared one of his strips in response to a tweet he made. My intent was tongue-in-cheek and very inline with the themes of his work, but he reacted very aggressively and then blocked me. It was a bit of a crushing moment because inside my head I was thinking, "I know and love this guy's work. Surely if I just engage him at his level without being a jackass, we can a…

Confession: Quite frankly, this is a worry for me. I have noticed that I've become shorter with people and less tolerant as I've got older. I've started to feel some resentment in certain situations where I felt I was being unfairly treated. I recognise these feelings and things, which I am grateful for. So I work hard to correct this, and I hope I succeed, but I seriously worry about my brain changing and becoming s…

As you get older time is more precious so you want to waste less of it. This is a factor, how much of a factor it is differs from person to person.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#246

Post by jeffbee » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

app wrote: post #215

Growing up I read Dilbert in the paper every morning. At some point I got one of the compilation books and for some reason in an epilogue Adams included his alternate theory of gravity which was essentially that gravity as force didn't exist and things pressed down on each other because everything was expanding at the same rate. He said he had yet to find anyone who could refute this. Even at 12 I could tell this guy…

Yeah, at the end of one of his books, I forget which, he described how he could manifest reality, such as getting a specific score on the GMAT not by targeted studying but by staring as hard as possible at the mail before he opened it. Absolute lunatic.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#247

Post by venndeezl » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #222

quietbritishjim wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. It started at roughly the time of his divorce, so it's hard to imagine there's not a connection. But, of course, you're right that we'll never know.

I suspect that having a family and knowing that blowback from your behavior will affect them is a moderating factor for a lot of people.

I suspect growing up in an era where community, the newspaper, radio and TV spewed religious, racist, and sexist content gradually increased sensory memory related neural activity that fostered biochemical and epigenetic effects that over time become effectively immutable.

Not sure why we are being coy about the triggers. Society of his youth and the biology are well documented.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#248

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #86

negzero7 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

His body isn’t even cold yet and the character assassinations are already pouring in. The „empathy havers“, allegedly.

People have been talking about this for years.

And there's no lack of empathy in immediately discussing the legacy of a public figure, on a site far away from anyone that's personally affected.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#249

Post by rsynnott » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #182

I loved Dilbert, having worked for more than one Dilbert-like company the humor frequently resonated with me. How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. Was this opinions he'd always had, but suppressed, did he somehow become radicalized or was it perhaps medically induced, e.g. a stroke or something. It was incredibly sad to see him throw away his life's wo…

I read one of his books once, written in the 90s or so. It included the idea that affirmations could literally change reality ("law of attraction"), and an _alternative theory of gravity_. At the time, I thought that these were probably attempts at jokes that didn't land very well, but... Once you believe one thing which is totally outside the pale, it is often very easy to start believing others.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#250

Post by neaden » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #241

dragonwriter wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. Was this opinions he'd always had, but suppressed, They weren't surpressed; he was very open about them from very early on in his career as a comic artist; they were central to his “origin story” and were woven directly into the comics. Its just, for a while, other aspects of his still-recent experience in corpora…

Were there early signs? I don't know of them, but to be honest, I mostly "knew" him through Dilbert. When he turned out to be a bigot it was a disappointing surprise to me.

I had one of his books from ages ago and it had a long bit on the end about affirmations and his weird views on quantum physics and the ability of human mind to manipulate them.