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Scott Adams has died

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Re: Scott Adams has died

#421

Post by volkl48 »

ravenstine wrote: post #60
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.

What makes it cautionary? From what I can tell, he hardly suffered from what you described. I'm not saying that I agree with everything that came out of Scott's mouth, but I never saw a sign of regret in him in regards to politics.

Well on the health side, he might not quite be Steve Jobs level, but he spent months taking complete nonsense "treatments" where his medical condition (predictably) worsened dramatically. That part's certainly a cautionary tale.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#422

Post by mpweiher »

jakevoytko wrote: post #270
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 followed his blog back when he started this descent, and I have a theory that it was hill climbing. He used to blog about pretty innocent stuff; his wife making fun of him for wearing pajama pants in public, behind the scenes on drawing comics, funny business interactions he'd had. But then he started getting taken out of context by various online-only publications, and he'd get a burst of traffic and a bunch of ha…

> ...will be elected president

But Trump was elected president. Twice. So maybe Adams was right? Or what did you mean with "hill climbing controversy"?

Re: Scott Adams has died

#423

Post by seanhunter »

rsynnott wrote: post #249
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.

Yeah likewise. The book I read had a completely wrong “explanation” of Bell’s inequalities that said that FTL transmission of information was going to be happening in the future as soon as we’d got some of the technical details around entanglement ironed out. It wasn’t a joke it was pseudo—scientific magical thinking. I knew then that he had either always been, or had turned into, a crank.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#425

Post by emmelaich »

isamuel wrote: post #277
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…

I also remember this, and in fact I found an old Dilbert newsletter from 1996 ("Dogbert's New Ruling Class") where he describes it: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdb/1996Mar/0000.ht... The simplest objection I can see is orbital mechanics.

from the same newsletter. How to be Funny.

> Humor often comes from the weird thoughts and emotions involved in a situation, as opposed to the simple facts. The best fodder for humor can be communicated by a simple description of the situation and then saying "So then I was thinking..."

Re: Scott Adams has died

#426

Post by allenu »

fantasizr wrote: post #189

younger folks may not realize how many of his strips were cut out of the newspaper and taped to fridges, cubicles, and office breakrooms.

That brings back memories. They were definitely popular. In the early 2000s, I worked at a small company and one coworker had a bunch of Dilbert strips all over one of her cubicle walls. It wasn't an insane amount, but her cube was on the way to the break room, so it was visible to everyone passing by. Apparently the owners of the company did not like that and had her take them down.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#427

Post by mempko »

inglor_cz wrote: post #353
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.

By this standard, many, of not most of the artists that lived prior to the Civil Rights Era are to be thrown out. I don't really want to study fluctuating levels of religious bigotry in Bach's life when I listen to his works.

In any period of history, there are people who know things are wrong and are vocal about it. There are artists prior to the Civil Rights Era that were not bigots. The problem you have is the artists that were celebrated AT THAT TIME which we know about were also those accepted by the status quo which allowed them to be known.

People knew slavery was wrong when slavery was happening. People knew child labor was wrong when child labor was happening. People knew segregation was wrong when segregation was happening. Those people were not rewarded by society.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#428

Post by SoftTalker »

Teever wrote: post #359
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.

'Don't speak ill of the dead' comes from an era where everyone genuinely believed that the dead could haunt you from the grave. It continues to have prominance in our society due to inertia and the fact that some people want a positive legacy to endure long after they pass regardless of whether or not they did anything in life to deserve that kind of legacy. As the person you're replying to wrote it better than I eve…

In the modern era it's usually said because the dead person cannot defend himself.

Now, Adams had plenty of opportunities to defend/explain his comments on certain issues, and he did not satisfy many people with those or perhaps dug himself in deeper (I myself really only know him from Dilbert in the 1990s, and am only superficially aware of anything controversial he did/said outside of that).

But I don't see anyone saying anything about him now that was not being said when he was alive.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#429

Post by kritiko »

nemomarx wrote: post #380
georgeburdell wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adams had a normal range of beliefs. Postulating that they arose from some extrinsic and extra-personal source is a condemnation of your own limited views. People get older and begin to care less about conformity, including keeping controversial thoughts to themselves, as society loosens its reins as your needs are met (to make money, to find a partner, to have a family, etc.)

The law of attraction / master persuader/ I can hypnotize large audiences stuff isn't that normal, I think? If you want an explanation for why he would try ivermectin for cancer treatment he had a lot of beliefs in that vein for a long time. I consider that tragic for him.

He was into NLP (the hypnosis theory) from way back.

James Hoffman, the coffee YouTuber, had an interesting comment on how he tried to use that in one of his 90s barista competitions, but seemed skeptical of it now. Scott remained a believer.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#430

Post by riazrizvi »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #351
riazrizvi wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did he go off the rails? My understanding is that the zeitgeist is taking people’s opposing views online and distorting them, removing context, to outrage our own audience and align it to our cause. Almost everyone is reasonable, it’s the contexts that our reasons are relevant to, which are different.

> the zeitgeist is taking people’s opposing views online and distorting them, removing context, to outrage our own audience and align it to our cause. This is 100% the case, with very infamous baddies, but people don't want to acknowledge it. It's a sad reality of this always on media we ingest. No idea what can be done, other than slowly ignoring more and more algorithmic stuff, and choose your own adventures based…

Elements of society slowly wise up to how they are being manipulated, as they are increasingly exposed to it. Now with modern AI the online manipulation tactics are getting worse. So as we find ourselves in that pool of ppl who see what is happening, we just stop using those platforms, and increasingly trust more human-human contact or long form video where people have a chance to state their positions.

Perhaps?

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