Scott Adams has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Scott Adams has died

#341

Post by renewiltord » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #308

renewiltord wrote: post #202

It was interesting watching him encounter the bureaucracy of healthcare provision in the US. He had a line to the President to get him somewhere but it doesn’t seem to have helped. https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1984915690634252352?s=20 His son died of a fentanyl drug overdose which is really tragic. Scott Adams was definitely a crazy person by the end of his time with all sorts of rants on this and that. But I…

https://www.statnews.com/2025/11/02/scott-adams-prostate-can... / https://archive.is/W57Vg > In his May stream announcing his cancer, he said he’d used anti-parasitic medications ivermectin and fenbendazole to treat himself, but they didn’t work. There’s no evidence that ivermectin works as a cancer treatment. I don't really think bureaucracy was his downfall.

No, of course not. He was doing all these alt therapies and they obviously wouldn’t help which I don’t think is that interesting. What I did find interesting is that someone who seemed so “connected” was still subject to all the usual normal-people problems.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#342

Post by mixmastamyk » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:39 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…

Minus the expanding clause, you are describing Newtonian vs. Einsteinian physics.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#343

Post by xrd » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

When I first started working in tech 25+ years ago, I really enjoyed Dilbert. It was ubiquitous in my circles and seemed accurate.

Then, I had my own startup, and as a manager of people, had to come to terms with a bunch of personality defects I brought in that I was blind to. Those blind spots really made me a bad manager. I'm grateful I got to learn about myself in that way.

But, then I started to view Dilbert differently. It felt like only some of the characters deserved empathy. I bet Scott Adams would hate that I used that word to critique his comics.

Is it just me? I always felt like half of the people were stupid no matter what the situation. Did I miss a more complex part of Dilbert?

I haven't been able to separate who Scott Adams was, or more specifically, the racist things he said, from his cultural commentary, no matter what insights there are. And, I can't admire "4d chess" because it feels like it is bragging that you can predict the winner if you throw an alligator and Stephen J Hawking into a pen together.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#344

Post by basseq » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

dstroot wrote: post #233

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…

I will probably be downvoted for posting something that “doesn’t add value” but I have to say that is a beautiful post about a difficult topic. I could never put into words my feelings as well as you just did. I loved his art. I did not love the man.

This reads like a Speaker for the Dead moment (from Ender’s Game): neither eulogy nor denunciation, but an honest accounting. Acknowledging the real impact without excusing the real harm.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#345

Post by mvdtnz » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

haakon wrote: post #157

claaams wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He gave a tour of his house on YouTube a long time ago and on every tv in nearly every room he has Fox News playing.

Just watching it now (and what a house it is). There's a TV in almost every room, and Fox News is on each of them. He says: "Yes, it is the same station on every television, because that's how the system is designed. It's designed so it'll play the same station all over the house. It happens to be Fox News, but I do flip around. It's not nailed on Fox News, in case you're wondering."

I think the "TV in every room" is far more concerning than the choice of station. That cannot be good for the mind.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#346

Post by elzbardico » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #321

embedding-shape wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don’t choose family Maybe it's because of my upbringing, and moving away from home when I was about 15, but why not? I think most people could actually "choose family" (or not, if it's better for you as individual). Why stick with people if they're mostly negative and have a negative impact on you? Just because you happen to share 0.0001% more DNA than any other human on the planet? Not to take away from the re…

My experience has been that "chosen family" is a thing that works when you're young, but almost always falls apart when you get older. This has happened to countless people I know. Life throws all kinds of curveballs, incentives change, conflicts arise, sometimes very intense conflicts. Empirically, chosen family is a structure that works in a particular place and time, then disintegrates when conditions change. Real…

Modern western societies kind of broken that. A culture of Kicking your kids as soon as they are 18 years old is not very conducive to a culture of strong familiar links like, let's say, the culture of early 20th century Sicily.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#347

Post by spankalee » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

ganelonhb wrote: post #333

spankalee wrote: post #225

[flagged]

nobody really cares about whether or not you’re going to mourn for someone, but I think it shows the content of your character that you felt the need to share that you won’t be mourning him because XYZ. Nobody is perfect, and I wager to guess even the almighty You has a few things in your past you wouldn’t want people to remember about you if you died slowly and painfully very publicly. Scott Adams said some really s…

I hope that people remember me for exactly who I was, especially if I'm ever as terrible as Scott Adams was.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#348

Post by windowpains » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #193

windowpains wrote: post #152

He was from a kinder more tolerant time, when people thought being non-anonymous online was safe. Sort of the same problem that others from his generation, Julian Assange, many others had. But I wonder if time won’t prove these people right. If you do put yourself out there you make enemies and open yourself to the hatred on many psycho basement dwellers. But if you don’t the world never knows you. All if that is too…

[flagged]

In the 90s you’d get flamed on Usenet for posting pseudo-anonymously. Even in early 00’s sites like /. Carried that forward with “anonymous coward” iirc.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#349

Post by Onavo » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

anonu wrote: post #258

One thing I appreciated from Scott was his "compounded skills" concept. He explained it: he wasn't a very good writer or illustrator. But he combined those skills with some humorous business insights to make Dilbert. That concept of merging skills stuck with me.

I got the same from patio11's blog posts too.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#350

Post by testdelacc1 » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

spankalee wrote: post #290

I don't get "avoiding the ugliness" when someone dies. We need to acknowledge the ugliness and try to do better. Acting like "oh, he was trolling", or "it was just a small amount of hating Black people and women" is exactly how you get Steven Miller in the fucking White House. We need to make it shameful to be bigoted again, and that means calling out the bigotry even in death.

I see where you’re coming from. But I’d argue that there’s broad consensus that his bigotry at the end was bad. So in this one moment, when we’ve just learned that he’s died, we can recall the good as well as the bad.

It is shameful to have those views. But perhaps we can bring it up tomorrow rather than right this minute.