8 ms·

This seems in line with both my personal experience and the "systems vs goals" approach advocated by Scott Adams. Build systems into your life that lead to des

This seems in line with both my personal experience and the "systems vs goals" approach advocated by Scott Adams. Build systems into your life that lead to desired outcomes naturally. Don't put yourself into situations that are likely to lead to bad outcomes. The easiest way to get results is to live a life that gives you the desired results by default.

mmastrac 6y ago
> [...] Scott Adams [...] Don't put yourself into situations that are likely to lead to bad outcomes. This is an unfortunate statement. Ironic that Scott Adams has basically tanked his own reputation outside the alt-right through a set of poor choices recently. Remember that this is the guy that created sockpuppet accounts on Reddit and Metafilter to pump his own image.
- war1025 6y ago
  But he also has F-you money coming out his ears, so he can do pretty well whatever he wants. And his following is bigger than you might expect.
  - suzzer99 6y ago
    So is qanon's - it doesn't mean Adams isn't nuts.
    - rdiddly 6y ago
      Calling him nuts is one of those cognition-enders. No need for further analysis if someone is just plain nutz amirite?
      - scarface74 6y ago
        Anyone who admits they had sock puppets to defend himself is kinda nuts.
        hombre_fatal 6y ago
        Getting caught defending yourself online with multiple account makes you look bad and is petty, but it's not nuts. Admitting to something when there's prevailing evidence against you isn't nuts either. Almost all HNers have no clue what it's like to have people coming together in great numbers to talk bad about you (to say nothing of whether you "deserve" it). The guy can't even get away with marrying a younger consenting adult woman without being burned at the stake.
        scarface74 6y ago
        Really? An adult can’t handle random people saying mean things about them on the internet?
        teddyh 6y ago
        Was kinda nuts. Nine years ago. About whether using sockpuppets was remotely acceptable. On that specific forum, on that specific topic. OK, sure. Sockpuppet accounts for trolling used to be common on several niche forums on the internet (which is how this practice got a name), especially this many years ago. I could certainly see how someone could be confused about how sockpuppeting was or was not acceptable behavior on a specific forum. He might have thought (but I’m speculating here) that he was engaging with (i.e. trolling) the forum within the (semi-)established norm of behavior for that forum. Is that all the rope with which you would have him hanged? That stump is so short that you couldn’t even tie a knot with it. If Adams only had kept his observations about Trump to himself, none of this would be an issue. But no, now everybody’s gotta find those crucial six lines somewhere in all the things he’s ever written, and whenever someone mentions anything he’s ever said, especially if it’s not about Trump or about politics in any way, it must be overwhelmed with random lists of accusations, all of which are false, misleading, or ancient and irrelevant, or all three. Merely to thoroughly discredit anyone even remotely associated with Trump.
        scarface74 6y ago
        Looking at Google Groups, my first post to Usenet was in 1993. So yeah, I know something about early consumer Internet culture. Even then sock puppets were frowned upon.
      - zipwitch 6y ago
        "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” - Carl Sagan If you want to see what someone who is credibly trying to predict events look at the work of Nate Silver or Nassim Taleb. When you obsess over one prediction by person most known for comedy and questionable personal statements, it's neither difficult nor inappropriate to put them in the clown category. If Adams himself wants to build his reputation as a prognosticator, he can easily create a publicly-verifiable record of them and any questions of his ability will answer itself in short order. That he has not (to the best of my knowledge) done so makes him look like a huckster.
        war1025 6y ago
        The thing you should take from Scott Adams isn't his predictions. It's the fact that he has spent 30 years writing Dilbert, which means he has followed the pulse of general office-culture, coupled with the fact that he is a train hypnotist, so he knows how people think. Basically, he will often give an interesting take on some current event that gives you a perspective on the situation that you hadn't considered. Like NN Taleb and Nate Silver, once you've groked their general schtick (long tails, Bayesian probability) there isn't a whole lot new they have to offer. It's worth checking back in on them from time to time, but you're unlikely to be blown away by anything you see. Mike Cernovich is a lot more interesting to follow on Twitter than Scott Adams. Adams is basically a pundit at this point. Cernovich is more of a journalist, so he follows and retweets breaking news that you're likely to hear about in the upcoming news cycles. The thing I like to keep in mind is that its important to follow people you don't always agree with, because otherwise you are missing out on a lot of perspectives and don't have as good a view of the current political landscape.
    - war1025 6y ago
      > It doesn't mean Adams isn't nuts To paraphrase something Scott Adams said about Mike Cernovich, another "alt-right lunatic": "You might not like his style, but he sure is right a lot"
      - zipwitch 6y ago
        Which is a far more convincing argument when someone can point to a well-documented set of predictions, than when they claim "I'm right a lot" and try to get you to fall for an association fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
        war1025 6y ago
        I guess I don't follow them for their "predictions", I follow them because they have interesting things to say. I don't agree with everything I hear on NPR. I don't agree with everything I hear in the alt-right twittersphere. But the two do seem to pair nicely in terms of getting a feel of the current national pulse.
- FriendlyNormie 6y ago
  And how is the reputation of the world-famous “mmastrac” faring these days? I bet he has valuable insight on this topic, let’s listen to what he has to say.
- rdiddly 6y ago
  OK people have begun commenting below, so have the courtesy to label your addenda with "edit" or the like, OK? [outside the alt-right] [Remember that this is the guy] etc.
- treeman79 6y ago
  He has had decades of brilliant insight into how people, companies, and government work. People really need to start considering alternative view points. Like perhaps maybe he is right on a number of topics.
  - hilbertseries 6y ago
    In 2016 he said Trump would win in a landslide and there would be rioting. Trump lost the popular vote and won the electoral college by a margin of less than 100k votes in three states. This year he tweeted that Republicans will be hunted, telling his followers that they will be dead in a year. We’re supposed to take him seriously?
    - ggreer 6y ago
      Weren't everyone's predictions wrong in 2016? I remember news organizations like the New York Times saying that Clinton had a 91% chance of winning the election.[1] 538's Nate Silver said that Clinton had a 99% chance of winning.[2] Scott Adams has many faults, but his 2016 election prediction fared better than pretty much everyone else. Remember he predicted a "win against Clinton in a tight election" in August of 2015.[3] 1. http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/18/presidential-forecast-updates/newsletter.html http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/18/presidential-... 2. Silver also noted that such a probability was too high considering the margin for error in polls, calling into question his model: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/06/nate_silver_forecasts_showing_clinton_with_99_chance_of_winning_dont_pass_commonsense_test.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/06/nate_silv... 3. https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/13/clown-genius/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/13/clown-genius/
      - heavenlyblue 6y ago
        What you said doesn’t refute that the guy isn’t brilliant indeed
        treeman79 6y ago
- pl0x 6y ago
  Scott Adams has fueled many conspiracies on the alt-right, COVID conspiracies, and recently has show his true colors as a racist, claiming he got his show pulled because he was white. Naval Ravikant appears frequently on his show and also fueled COVID conspiracies.
  - 127 6y ago
    Yes, COVID conospiracies like: masks work.
  - rdtwo 6y ago
    People can be brilliant in some areas and absolutely batshit in others. I think that is the norm not the exception actually. If you discount their brilliance because of occasional batshittery you’ll miss out on a lot of insightful stuff.
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    He's racist because he thinks he was the victim of racism? I'm curious what you think about black BLM protesters?
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >has show his true colors as a racist, claiming he got his show pulled because he was white You can claim/believe that without being a racist. It's enough that those calling the shots (which show to pull) are racist or too pre-occupied about race...
- tome 6y ago
  > Remember that this is the guy that created sockpuppet accounts on Reddit and Metafilter I don't remember that. Could you link some supporting evidence to remind me?
  - teddyh 6y ago
    https://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_scandal/ https://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_s... (Link courtesy of Pxtl¹) This was nine years ago, though. If he hasn’t done anything comparable since, I think he ought to get some slack by now. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667728
    - tome 6y ago
      Thanks!
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Ironic that Scott Adams has basically tanked his own reputation outside the alt-right through a set of poor choices recently. Or in other words, stated opinions that disagree with yours / polite Californian dinner talk.
  - dtech 6y ago
    Quote from him on women > The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. [1] Yes, very California bubble to think that women are equal and not like children or mentally handicapped [1] https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/ https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/
    - teddyh 6y ago
      That’s yet another quote taken wildly out of context. Context explained here: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/03/27/im-a-what/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/03/27/im-a-what/
      - wombatmobile 6y ago
        He says: > But perhaps I can summarize my viewpoint so you can understand why I’m such a misogynist asshole douche bag. Here’s my view in brief: > You can’t expect to have a rational discussion on any topic that has an emotional charge. Emotion pushes out reason. That is true for all humans, including children, men, women, and people in every range of mental ability. The path of least resistance is to walk away from that sort of fight. Men generally prefer the path of least resistance. The exception is when men irrationally debate with other men. That’s a type of sport. No one expects opinions to be changed as a result.
        teddyh 6y ago
        I would not normally try to summarize a long complex explanation, but I would think that this section would also be crucial to include in any summary: > First, some background. A few weeks ago I asked readers of this blog to suggest a topic they would like to see me write about. The topic that got the most up votes, by a landslide, was something called Men’s Rights. Obviously the fix was in. Activists had mobilized their minions to trick me into giving their cause some free publicity. In retrospect, the Men’s Rights activists probably should have done some homework on me before hatching this scheme. > As you can see, I thought it would be funny to embrace the Men’s Rights viewpoint in the beginning of the piece and get those guys all lathered up before dismissing their entire membership as a “bunch of pussies.”
- teddyh 6y ago
  > a set of poor choices recently. Care to give a link? Last time someone actually came through with links to their allegations about Scott Adams, all of them were false, misleading, taken out of context, etc., except one: the old sockpuppet incident from nine years ago.
  - astura 6y ago
    I mean this is pretty... Uh, unbelievable https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1277411944459153408 https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/12774119444...
    - mmastrac 6y ago
      The "Republicans will be hunted" tweets are even worse: https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/1278316325044056064?lang=en https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/127831632504405606... https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/1278309835453284357?lang=en https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/127830983545328435...
      - arkis22 6y ago
        They will however be shamed into being less than human for lacking empathy. Like the past XXXXX years...
      - teddyh 6y ago
        By hounding him in this way, you’re making his point for him.
        mmastrac 6y ago
        "Hounding him" by bringing up his history on an unrelated forum?
        teddyh 6y ago
        Hounding him by, whenever his name is mentioned in any context, bringing forward example after supposed example of how he is somehow not competent enough to ever be allowed to have a receptive audience. Even though this very example you brought up is a prediction of just this kind of thing?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- saeranv 6y ago
  Yes. For those that doubt this, consider: 1. He's one of those people that thinks Trump is playing 4D chess. 2. He 'successfully' predicted Trump would win the election, and has subsequently fooled himself into thinking he has some special insight into social dynamics and interpreting Trump's 4D chess that allows him to continue making accurate predictions. I'm sure the more predictions he makes, the closer he'll get to a 50% success rate (binomial theorem) - as do most 'expert' political prognosticators who aren't using statistical models but going off their intuition. I wonder if he'll figure out what's happening. When I read his writings, I just see an incredibly naive approach to prediction, ignorant of probability, that is primarily informed by the fact that he's a Republican who therefore is biased towards favorably interpreting Republican odds.
  - war1025 6y ago
    To be fair, he's been predicting for two years now that Kamala Harris would be on the Democratic ticket. That is maybe nothing special, but I never heard of her, and she was a garbage fire when she campaigned here in Iowa. So I thought that was noteworthy.
- arkis22 6y ago
  I urge you to distinguish good advice from the people that say it. It might benefit you.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  I don't think this comment adds anything of value to this conversation. Lots of horrible people have said wise things, and lots of great people have said horrible things. Their reputation and the merit of a given thing that was said is uncorrelated. I mean, there's a long list of people who said things people find offensive: Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman, Barack Obama, William Shockley, Freeman Dyson, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. It takes fairly little maturity to not let that take away from the insightful comments they have made.
  - watwut 6y ago
    The "horrible" or dumb things you said are absolutely relevant toward whether it is reasonable to assume you know what you talk about. In particular, the offensive things Stallman said or did are absolutely relevant when he would spew quotes about relationships or people. It is different when he talks about philosophy of open source. But on those particular topics, he is not being insightful as he is dumb as brick o that topic.
dreeves 6y ago
Back in 2015 we (Beeminder) wrote a blog post praising Scott Adam's "systems vs goals" insight which I still stand by: https://blog.beeminder.com/systems/ https://blog.beeminder.com/systems/ Excerpt (quoting Adams): If you do something every day, it's a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal. […] Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good everytime they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction. Also related: SMART goals.
- teddyh 6y ago
  If you want it from Adams himself, here’s a link to a blog post: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/ Alternatively, as a ~5-minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw
agumonkey 6y ago
I guess there's a bit of abstract economy behind this. A good context is worth a lot of efforts. Just like a clean space, a nicely organized workshop, a well tuned chair desk keyboard.. Thing is it's hard to create that context. Maybe copying good ideas or joining forces..

mmastrac 6y ago

> [...] Scott Adams [...] Don't put yourself into situations that are likely to lead to bad outcomes. This is an unfortunate statement. Ironic that Scott Adams has basically tanked his own reputation outside the alt-right through a set of poor choices recently. Remember that this is the guy that created sockpuppet accounts on Reddit and Metafilter to pump his own image.

war1025 6y ago
But he also has F-you money coming out his ears, so he can do pretty well whatever he wants. And his following is bigger than you might expect.
- suzzer99 6y ago
  So is qanon's - it doesn't mean Adams isn't nuts.
  - rdiddly 6y ago
    Calling him nuts is one of those cognition-enders. No need for further analysis if someone is just plain nutz amirite?
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Anyone who admits they had sock puppets to defend himself is kinda nuts.
      - hombre_fatal 6y ago
        Getting caught defending yourself online with multiple account makes you look bad and is petty, but it's not nuts. Admitting to something when there's prevailing evidence against you isn't nuts either. Almost all HNers have no clue what it's like to have people coming together in great numbers to talk bad about you (to say nothing of whether you "deserve" it). The guy can't even get away with marrying a younger consenting adult woman without being burned at the stake.
        scarface74 6y ago
        Really? An adult can’t handle random people saying mean things about them on the internet?
      - teddyh 6y ago
        Was kinda nuts. Nine years ago. About whether using sockpuppets was remotely acceptable. On that specific forum, on that specific topic. OK, sure. Sockpuppet accounts for trolling used to be common on several niche forums on the internet (which is how this practice got a name), especially this many years ago. I could certainly see how someone could be confused about how sockpuppeting was or was not acceptable behavior on a specific forum. He might have thought (but I’m speculating here) that he was engaging with (i.e. trolling) the forum within the (semi-)established norm of behavior for that forum. Is that all the rope with which you would have him hanged? That stump is so short that you couldn’t even tie a knot with it. If Adams only had kept his observations about Trump to himself, none of this would be an issue. But no, now everybody’s gotta find those crucial six lines somewhere in all the things he’s ever written, and whenever someone mentions anything he’s ever said, especially if it’s not about Trump or about politics in any way, it must be overwhelmed with random lists of accusations, all of which are false, misleading, or ancient and irrelevant, or all three. Merely to thoroughly discredit anyone even remotely associated with Trump.
        scarface74 6y ago
        Looking at Google Groups, my first post to Usenet was in 1993. So yeah, I know something about early consumer Internet culture. Even then sock puppets were frowned upon.
    - zipwitch 6y ago
      "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” - Carl Sagan If you want to see what someone who is credibly trying to predict events look at the work of Nate Silver or Nassim Taleb. When you obsess over one prediction by person most known for comedy and questionable personal statements, it's neither difficult nor inappropriate to put them in the clown category. If Adams himself wants to build his reputation as a prognosticator, he can easily create a publicly-verifiable record of them and any questions of his ability will answer itself in short order. That he has not (to the best of my knowledge) done so makes him look like a huckster.
      - war1025 6y ago
        The thing you should take from Scott Adams isn't his predictions. It's the fact that he has spent 30 years writing Dilbert, which means he has followed the pulse of general office-culture, coupled with the fact that he is a train hypnotist, so he knows how people think. Basically, he will often give an interesting take on some current event that gives you a perspective on the situation that you hadn't considered. Like NN Taleb and Nate Silver, once you've groked their general schtick (long tails, Bayesian probability) there isn't a whole lot new they have to offer. It's worth checking back in on them from time to time, but you're unlikely to be blown away by anything you see. Mike Cernovich is a lot more interesting to follow on Twitter than Scott Adams. Adams is basically a pundit at this point. Cernovich is more of a journalist, so he follows and retweets breaking news that you're likely to hear about in the upcoming news cycles. The thing I like to keep in mind is that its important to follow people you don't always agree with, because otherwise you are missing out on a lot of perspectives and don't have as good a view of the current political landscape.
  - war1025 6y ago
    > It doesn't mean Adams isn't nuts To paraphrase something Scott Adams said about Mike Cernovich, another "alt-right lunatic": "You might not like his style, but he sure is right a lot"
    - zipwitch 6y ago
      Which is a far more convincing argument when someone can point to a well-documented set of predictions, than when they claim "I'm right a lot" and try to get you to fall for an association fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
      - war1025 6y ago
        I guess I don't follow them for their "predictions", I follow them because they have interesting things to say. I don't agree with everything I hear on NPR. I don't agree with everything I hear in the alt-right twittersphere. But the two do seem to pair nicely in terms of getting a feel of the current national pulse.
FriendlyNormie 6y ago
And how is the reputation of the world-famous “mmastrac” faring these days? I bet he has valuable insight on this topic, let’s listen to what he has to say.
rdiddly 6y ago
OK people have begun commenting below, so have the courtesy to label your addenda with "edit" or the like, OK? [outside the alt-right] [Remember that this is the guy] etc.
treeman79 6y ago
He has had decades of brilliant insight into how people, companies, and government work. People really need to start considering alternative view points. Like perhaps maybe he is right on a number of topics.
- hilbertseries 6y ago
  In 2016 he said Trump would win in a landslide and there would be rioting. Trump lost the popular vote and won the electoral college by a margin of less than 100k votes in three states. This year he tweeted that Republicans will be hunted, telling his followers that they will be dead in a year. We’re supposed to take him seriously?
  - ggreer 6y ago
    Weren't everyone's predictions wrong in 2016? I remember news organizations like the New York Times saying that Clinton had a 91% chance of winning the election.[1] 538's Nate Silver said that Clinton had a 99% chance of winning.[2] Scott Adams has many faults, but his 2016 election prediction fared better than pretty much everyone else. Remember he predicted a "win against Clinton in a tight election" in August of 2015.[3] 1. http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/18/presidential-forecast-updates/newsletter.html http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/18/presidential-... 2. Silver also noted that such a probability was too high considering the margin for error in polls, calling into question his model: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/06/nate_silver_forecasts_showing_clinton_with_99_chance_of_winning_dont_pass_commonsense_test.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/06/nate_silv... 3. https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/13/clown-genius/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/13/clown-genius/
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      What you said doesn’t refute that the guy isn’t brilliant indeed
      - treeman79 6y ago
pl0x 6y ago
Scott Adams has fueled many conspiracies on the alt-right, COVID conspiracies, and recently has show his true colors as a racist, claiming he got his show pulled because he was white. Naval Ravikant appears frequently on his show and also fueled COVID conspiracies.
- 127 6y ago
  Yes, COVID conospiracies like: masks work.
- rdtwo 6y ago
  People can be brilliant in some areas and absolutely batshit in others. I think that is the norm not the exception actually. If you discount their brilliance because of occasional batshittery you’ll miss out on a lot of insightful stuff.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  He's racist because he thinks he was the victim of racism? I'm curious what you think about black BLM protesters?
- coldtea 6y ago
  >has show his true colors as a racist, claiming he got his show pulled because he was white You can claim/believe that without being a racist. It's enough that those calling the shots (which show to pull) are racist or too pre-occupied about race...
tome 6y ago
> Remember that this is the guy that created sockpuppet accounts on Reddit and Metafilter I don't remember that. Could you link some supporting evidence to remind me?
- teddyh 6y ago
  https://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_scandal/ https://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_s... (Link courtesy of Pxtl¹) This was nine years ago, though. If he hasn’t done anything comparable since, I think he ought to get some slack by now. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21667728
  - tome 6y ago
    Thanks!
coldtea 6y ago
>Ironic that Scott Adams has basically tanked his own reputation outside the alt-right through a set of poor choices recently. Or in other words, stated opinions that disagree with yours / polite Californian dinner talk.
- dtech 6y ago
  Quote from him on women > The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. [1] Yes, very California bubble to think that women are equal and not like children or mentally handicapped [1] https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/ https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adam-sexist-mens-rights/
  - teddyh 6y ago
    That’s yet another quote taken wildly out of context. Context explained here: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/03/27/im-a-what/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2011/03/27/im-a-what/
    - wombatmobile 6y ago
      He says: > But perhaps I can summarize my viewpoint so you can understand why I’m such a misogynist asshole douche bag. Here’s my view in brief: > You can’t expect to have a rational discussion on any topic that has an emotional charge. Emotion pushes out reason. That is true for all humans, including children, men, women, and people in every range of mental ability. The path of least resistance is to walk away from that sort of fight. Men generally prefer the path of least resistance. The exception is when men irrationally debate with other men. That’s a type of sport. No one expects opinions to be changed as a result.
      - teddyh 6y ago
        I would not normally try to summarize a long complex explanation, but I would think that this section would also be crucial to include in any summary: > First, some background. A few weeks ago I asked readers of this blog to suggest a topic they would like to see me write about. The topic that got the most up votes, by a landslide, was something called Men’s Rights. Obviously the fix was in. Activists had mobilized their minions to trick me into giving their cause some free publicity. In retrospect, the Men’s Rights activists probably should have done some homework on me before hatching this scheme. > As you can see, I thought it would be funny to embrace the Men’s Rights viewpoint in the beginning of the piece and get those guys all lathered up before dismissing their entire membership as a “bunch of pussies.”
teddyh 6y ago
> a set of poor choices recently. Care to give a link? Last time someone actually came through with links to their allegations about Scott Adams, all of them were false, misleading, taken out of context, etc., except one: the old sockpuppet incident from nine years ago.
- astura 6y ago
  I mean this is pretty... Uh, unbelievable https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1277411944459153408 https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/12774119444...
  - mmastrac 6y ago
    The "Republicans will be hunted" tweets are even worse: https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/1278316325044056064?lang=en https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/127831632504405606... https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/1278309835453284357?lang=en https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/127830983545328435...
    - arkis22 6y ago
      They will however be shamed into being less than human for lacking empathy. Like the past XXXXX years...
    - teddyh 6y ago
      By hounding him in this way, you’re making his point for him.
      - mmastrac 6y ago
        "Hounding him" by bringing up his history on an unrelated forum?
        teddyh 6y ago
        Hounding him by, whenever his name is mentioned in any context, bringing forward example after supposed example of how he is somehow not competent enough to ever be allowed to have a receptive audience. Even though this very example you brought up is a prediction of just this kind of thing?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
saeranv 6y ago
Yes. For those that doubt this, consider: 1. He's one of those people that thinks Trump is playing 4D chess. 2. He 'successfully' predicted Trump would win the election, and has subsequently fooled himself into thinking he has some special insight into social dynamics and interpreting Trump's 4D chess that allows him to continue making accurate predictions. I'm sure the more predictions he makes, the closer he'll get to a 50% success rate (binomial theorem) - as do most 'expert' political prognosticators who aren't using statistical models but going off their intuition. I wonder if he'll figure out what's happening. When I read his writings, I just see an incredibly naive approach to prediction, ignorant of probability, that is primarily informed by the fact that he's a Republican who therefore is biased towards favorably interpreting Republican odds.
- war1025 6y ago
  To be fair, he's been predicting for two years now that Kamala Harris would be on the Democratic ticket. That is maybe nothing special, but I never heard of her, and she was a garbage fire when she campaigned here in Iowa. So I thought that was noteworthy.
arkis22 6y ago
I urge you to distinguish good advice from the people that say it. It might benefit you.
BeetleB 6y ago
I don't think this comment adds anything of value to this conversation. Lots of horrible people have said wise things, and lots of great people have said horrible things. Their reputation and the merit of a given thing that was said is uncorrelated. I mean, there's a long list of people who said things people find offensive: Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman, Barack Obama, William Shockley, Freeman Dyson, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. It takes fairly little maturity to not let that take away from the insightful comments they have made.
- watwut 6y ago
  The "horrible" or dumb things you said are absolutely relevant toward whether it is reasonable to assume you know what you talk about. In particular, the offensive things Stallman said or did are absolutely relevant when he would spew quotes about relationships or people. It is different when he talks about philosophy of open source. But on those particular topics, he is not being insightful as he is dumb as brick o that topic.

dreeves 6y ago

Back in 2015 we (Beeminder) wrote a blog post praising Scott Adam's "systems vs goals" insight which I still stand by: https://blog.beeminder.com/systems/ https://blog.beeminder.com/systems/ Excerpt (quoting Adams): If you do something every day, it's a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal. […] Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good everytime they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction. Also related: SMART goals.

teddyh 6y ago
If you want it from Adams himself, here’s a link to a blog post: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2013/11/18/goals-vs-systems/ Alternatively, as a ~5-minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcKTYvupJw

agumonkey 6y ago

I guess there's a bit of abstract economy behind this. A good context is worth a lot of efforts. Just like a clean space, a nicely organized workshop, a well tuned chair desk keyboard.. Thing is it's hard to create that context. Maybe copying good ideas or joining forces..