Scott taught many how to think, which saved the United States.
Care to elaborate?
Scott Adams has died
981–990 of 1001 posts
Re: Scott Adams has died
#982Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know Scott’s theory, but gravity as a force indeed doesn’t exist. That’s a classical physics concept. For the last century, the accepted theory is that gravity is indeed not a force but a manifestation of the space-time curvature. That’s one of the main points of general relativity.
My physics is very rusty and very basic, but I don't think classical physics said gravity was a force either. eg in Newton's 2nd law or engineering mechanics, gravity is the "a" or the "g" not the "F".
Well congratulations, you just stated the equivalence principle that led Einstein to GR (you need special relativity and a bit of maths and you’re there)!
Re: Scott Adams has died
#983Earlier 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…
Ironically, a whole bunch of people have spent their formative years in a cancel-culture world and this now shapes their actions. But at an art gallery, Picasso is near worshipped despite his torrid misogyny and abuse in his personal life which was terrible even by the standards of his day. The views on his art were formed at a time before cancel-culture was a thing. Realising: - everyone has performed good and bad a…
You know, I think I disagree.
I didn't give Picasso the benefit of the doubt because he was an amazing artist. I did so simply because I was ignorant of how horrible he was.
Some people have trouble updating their feelings when new information arrives.
I like him -> He causes harm -> I want to continue liking him -> his harm wasn't so bad.
That's all.
Picasso made some cool stuff. I will never display any of it in my home because he was horrible.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#984Scott 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 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…
> the importance of calling out bigotry.
There is a thin line here. People need people like Adams to be a racist to justify themselves. If you look for flaws in everyone overstepping conventional dogmata, you would rate higher on a scale that approximates authoritarian personalities. My case here is exactly such a case as well. It is only an approximation, but it would be a delusion to ignore these tendencies in online or media discussions.
Perhaps he was racist, I didn't know him personally. He certainly was controversial and he wanted to provoke. That comes with a price. But statements with inverted skin colors are simply treated differently.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#985I try to consider how I feel about this, and all I come back with is an emptiness, a follow feeling. I'm not going to gloat, nor am I going to consider him even remotely a good person based on things he's said and done. I will never know him outside of his works and the things he's said and done, so I can only judge on those merits. I guess all I can really do is shake my head and wonder what could have been had he n…
--[not] remotely a good person? Depends on the metric I guess. Adams-- helped and cheeredd up thousands (millions?) of people, said racist stuff. --You (probably) or me --helped maybe one or two people, didn't say racist stuff.
I'm reminded of the dril quote about drunk driving, or the LoGH one about Frederica being made happy.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#986I 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…
> “deeply off the rails” How sheltered are you people? Scott Adams was a pretty standard non-woke boomer. Do you think that just because you don’t hear certain opinions in the workplace or the faculty or the Atlantic podcast, that they aren’t widely held by members of the public? Do you think everyone’s into DEI, BLM, trans-rights, multi-culturalism etc?
Calling black people a "hate group" is not really standard boomer stuff, I think
Re: Scott Adams has died
#987The 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.
See also: JK Rowling. Pre-2018: Inclusion! Weirdos are people too! The marginalized need a voice! Post-2019: Transsexuals are a blight on society! They cause cancer in puppies!
Actually she's been very consistent in standing up for women's rights, which is what drives her to be critical of gender identity beliefs.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#988Earlier quoted context omitted.
See also: JK Rowling. Pre-2018: Inclusion! Weirdos are people too! The marginalized need a voice! Post-2019: Transsexuals are a blight on society! They cause cancer in puppies!
This progressive movement is absolutely totalitarian. As long as you adhere to all mainstream tenets, you're good and virtuous, like pre-2018 JK Rowling. Gay Dumbledore, yay! But if the mainstream tenets change, and some previously loyal followers disagree with some of them, they should be ostracised, cancelled and vilified, like post-2019 JK Rowling. The funny thing is that this is what real fascists and communists…
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Re: Scott Adams has died
#989Earlier quoted context omitted.
See also: JK Rowling. Pre-2018: Inclusion! Weirdos are people too! The marginalized need a voice! Post-2019: Transsexuals are a blight on society! They cause cancer in puppies!
It's so weird. She's still convinced that woman boxer is secretly trans. Or how the primary concern TERFs like her have is that men will dress up as women to rape them in the women's room, instead of what they do now, which is rape women including in places that are women's rooms. It's fascinating (in a horrid way) what they consider important. It's also fascinating how the person who wrote "Fight Fascists as a teena…
Imane Khelif is male, and there are karotype tests and medical reports which prove it.
The concern that "TERFs" have is women's rights being chipped away in favor of acquiescing to male demands.
Re: Scott Adams has died
#990Earlier quoted context omitted.
For what it's worth, banter on social media with someone you're not familiar with is almost always playing with fire. It's really easy for something to come across wrong or just be kind of exhausting, and this effect is magnified the more of a spotlight that person has. You're just one of thousands of interactions they've had that day/week/month, and so unless you know they enjoy that kind of playfulness, I find it's…
It really doesn't have to. I thought I was being clever when in a thread I likened something Michael Godwin said to being Nazi, because I thought it was a funny self-reference, and he just gave me the Twitter equivalent of an eye roll and moved on.
You fell afoul of Godwin's meta-law.