Good riddance! He was a nasty bigot who promoted racism and misogyny.
His comic was never that good.
His cultural influence as a celebrity has been massively, disgustingly negative. The world is better off without him.
Scott Adams has died
861–870 of 1001 posts
Re: Scott Adams has died
#862Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
After reading that book I found it a lot less easy to be amused by Dilbert. That experience contributed to my actively trying not to learn things about artists I enjoy. It's that "don't meet your heroes" cliche, I guess.
I try and also never actually listen to the lyrics of songs, like 90% of the time I'm disappointed and it ruins the song for me.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#863Scott 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…
> The racism and the provocations were always there Were they? Can you cite an example? Because I also grew up with Dilbert, and I was never aware of it.
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Re: Scott Adams has died
#864Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s interesting how many responses to this comment seem to have interpreted it fairly differently to my own reading. There are many responding about “ignoring racism,” “whitewashing,” or the importance of calling out bigotry. I’m not sure how that follows from a comment that literally calls out the racism and describes it as “unambiguous.” Striving to “avoid the ugliness” in your own life does not mean ignor…
You're ignoring the family metaphor. GP is painting Adams as the old racist uncle everyone tolerates at family dinners. It's excusing Adams' racist behavior, in the same way you excuse your racist uncle to a partner the first time they come to dinner. It's not okay, and it's not okay to pretend it's okay.
There are a lot of racist uncles in tech.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#865Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s interesting how many responses to this comment seem to have interpreted it fairly differently to my own reading. There are many responding about “ignoring racism,” “whitewashing,” or the importance of calling out bigotry. I’m not sure how that follows from a comment that literally calls out the racism and describes it as “unambiguous.” Striving to “avoid the ugliness” in your own life does not mean ignor…
This took me a long time to work through: 1. People’s beliefs are strongly shaped by upbringing and social environment. 2. A belief feeling “natural” or common does not make it correct or benign. 3. What’s most commendable is the effort to examine and revise inherited beliefs, especially when they cause harm. 4. This framework lets me understand how any individual arrived at their views without endorsing those views.…
Great thinking framework. And there are many roads leading to some very similar realizations. I guess it's all about what truly really works.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#866Earlier 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.)
>Adams had a normal range of beliefs. Manifesting things into reality through writing them often enough is FAR from a normal belief. Dude was a bit looney from the get go
Prayer is basically that isn't it? Also, "the secret."
Re: Scott Adams has died
#867Earlier 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 best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people“ -Scott Adams Does that sound reasonable to you?
Best to listen him directly: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-2885723/Video-D...
1. Poll says black people are not ok with with white people
2. Which makes them racist
3. Get away from racists
Turning this 180 degrees around is insanity.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#868Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of his arc was posting about himself on Reddit using sockpuppets, calling himself a genius: https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpupp...
Don't forget his claim that master hypnotists are using camgirls to give him super-orgasms to steal his money. He was a nutter in more ways than just his politics. https://web.archive.org/web/20201108112121/https://www.scott... > In other news, for several years I have been tracking a Master Wizard that I believe lives in Southern California. It seems he has trained a small army of attractive women in his method. The…
This is a fascinating development. Did he talk about this regularly?
Re: Scott Adams has died
#869I grew up with Scott Adams.
My very fist job as a junior dev in a corporation, pre dot-com, his comics resonated with me and my co-workers. My proudest achievement was finding a way through the corporate firewall to get his comics off the internet and post them internally.
As I grew older his work became less interesting and less relevant as I moved to the pointy haired side. But as a natural skeptic his impact helped shape me and my career. It worked for me!
I don't understand what causes such successful people to take a hard turn toward apparent bigotry. As you age you have to reconcile change and your place in history. I'll try to take lessons from Scott Adams and my other would-be heroes as I go and hope to leave the world better off in my small way.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#870Scott 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…
“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.” Maybe I’m getting cynical, yet every time I see an mdash and rules of 3, it triggers the feeling of “This sounds like AI” … Here’s another example: “ I can avoid the ugliness—t…
AI learned from human writing -- stuff like what I write all the time.