Feels like an appropriate time to remind folks of one of his stranger pieces of work, this board game commissioned by Lockheed Martin: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/60686/the-ethics-challen...
Looks like a office worker themed version of Clue
Scott Adams has died
761–770 of 1001 posts
Re: Scott Adams has died
#762Scott 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…
Humans have a lot of trouble with realizing people aren't binary. People hate the idea that bad people can do good things.
Is that really true? Young children perhaps. IME most folks learn that people are complicated at least by adolescence once they realize their parents are imperfect.
Of course there is the ever present temptation to resort to tribalism, which is pretty binary: in or out.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#763[deleted]
Re: Scott Adams has died
#764I 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…
Sometimes people just get to retirement age, realize they don't have much longer to go and choose to stop hiding who they are. Morrissey of The Smiths is another guy who's alienated his audience. Moe Tucker, drummer in the legendary NYC '60s counterculture band The Velvet Underground was picketing at a Tea Party rally in 2009 and saying "Obama is destroying America from the inside".
> Sometimes people just get to retirement age, realize they don't have much longer to go and choose to stop hiding who they are
Personality changes over time, it's not necessarily about hiding.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#765[flagged]
> However, Scott Adams as an individual was deeply problematic
Can you talk about your conversations with him?
Re: Scott Adams has died
#766Earlier 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.)
What’s normal about bigotry? It’s brain damage.
There's some very, very rich irony in your comment.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#767Earlier 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.)
What’s normal about bigotry? It’s brain damage.
[deleted]
Re: Scott Adams has died
#768Scott 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…
Life and people are complicated and messy. It’s not easy to reduce people to good or bad. Celebrate the good in life, it’s too short to focus and well on the negative.
Dwelling on the negative is one thing. Acknowledging the bad with the good is often the point of obituaries and threads like this one.
We don't need to whitewash the world to enjoy the good parts.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#769Why does every other comment apologize for adams' political views? It's like a bunch of people were conditioned or brainwashed into reflexibly regurgitation nonsense.
It's quite bizarre I agree. The fact that the only comment I've read that doesn't follow the pattern was this one is disheartening.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#770Maybe his corpse can identify as 'living'? If you think that's repugnant, then I refer you to his comic where he parodies a black engineer as white. https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/uh21my/scott_adams_... The guy had a point about 1990s business culture, but lost that narrative down extremism and conspiracy theories. Guy was pure trash for the last 10 years.
It’s not hilarious, but it’s a fair take on how seriously and stupidly non-falsifiable declarations are in a society that only functions on the objectivity of its laws.
Its DEI and post-modernism colliding. That’s a fair take.