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Scott Adams has died

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Re: Scott Adams has died

#701

Post by RIMR »

coderc wrote: post #547
RIMR wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a lot of privilege to ignore a person's overt racism and only remember a person's more agreeable qualities. Whitewashing a person's legacy in this way is a disservice to all of the people that person directed hatred at, as if it didn't really happen. He was a racist person, and the people he was racist towards would prefer that people not forget that, even in death, because the problems that Scott Adams embo…

I'm black, and I can ignore Adams' "overt racism", because I understood the context of his words, and I can empathize with him. Please don't speak for an entire group of people.

[flagged]

Re: Scott Adams has died

#702

Post by quietbritishjim »

oliwarner wrote: post #252
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.

His 18yo son overdosed on fentanyl in 2018. I don't want to excuse his opinions but that's the sort of event that can change a person. He did online chats, and did one immediately after. It's a tough watch. https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1046764270128484352

That is awful.

But his (first) divorce was in 2014 and his blog posts already seemed bitter around that time.

Edit: as another comment points out, it was a few years even earlier than that so I stand corrected.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#703

Post by turtlesdown11 »

whiddershins wrote: post #623

I appreciated Scott Adams, and am sad he has passed away. I learned a lot from him and his perspective helped me through difficult times. The comments here are very unfortunate. When someone dies, it is appropriate to speak of what you appreciated about them. That's it. That's all you need to say. And you aren't required to say anything at all. Apologizing for liking him because of x or y or explaining that you liked…

Scott Adams was an unrepentant racist.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#706

Post by Izikiel43 »

hearsathought wrote: post #528
emil-lp wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here it is, unabridged Make a will. Pay off your credit card balance. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support. Fund your company 401K to the maximum. Fund your IRA to the maximum. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it. Put six months’ expenses in a money market account. Take whatever is left over and invest it 70 percent in a stock index fund and 30 percent in a bond fund throug…

Solid advice overall. But I have to disagree with the 401k advice. > Fund your company 401K to the maximum. Fund it up to amount your company matches. The maximum you can contribute to 401k is 40% of your salary I believe. I wouldn't contribute 40% of my salary to the 401k. Just the amount your company matches ( 5% or whatever it is for your company ). That 5% match ( or whatever it is ) is free money. It would be fo…

No, if you can, max the 401k, as long as you've set up emergency fund and other stuff. After maxing the 401k, then go to taxable brokerage.

The personal finance reddit goes like, fund it up to the match is basic, but if you can, max it.

You reduce your taxable income and the money doesn't pay capital gains when you pull it out.

Re: Scott Adams has died

#707

Post by russellbeattie »

Scott Adams is yet another example of the need to separate a person's work from their qualities as a person. It's just something we have to accept: Bad people can make great things.

An example that I like (that doesn't include WWII Germans) is William Shockley. He was a pretty horrible person all told. He didn't kill anyone, he was just a shitty guy. And yet the world owes him a debt for accurately describing how semiconductors work at the atomic level. Silicon Valley basically wouldn't exist without him.

Adams is like that as well. His work was funny and insightful, his politics were abhorrent. He will always have an asterisk next to his name in the history books because of it.

(Not that anyone will care about Dilbert in another decade or so. Much of it today is already about a moment in business that is long past).

Re: Scott Adams has died

#708

Post by pokstad »

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 just watched a Veritisium video that said the same thing: https://youtu.be/XRr1kaXKBsU

Re: Scott Adams has died

#709

Post by alexandre_m »

Itoldmyselfso wrote: post #287
ravenstine wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This was recorded before he publicly came out as racist[1] and anti-vaccine[2]: https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/scott-adams-... [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/23/dilberts-scott-adams-... [2] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jan/26/scott-adam...

On [2] he said that natural immunity from getting covid-19 is better than getting the vaccine alone, which is factually correct, as many studies demonstrated (note: may vary by strains, but was particularly the case in 2021/2022). There's nothing crazy about this, and it's very reasonable to say you prefer to evaluate the risk/benefit and take the vaccine accordingly, instead of mandating this for every demographic.

People tend to fall back on tribalism and slap labels on others instead of engaging with nuance or complexity.

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