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>Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years. He has had some questionable views all throughout his life. In his book "The Dilbert Future", which
by ActorNightly 1y ago
>Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years.
He has had some questionable views all throughout his life. In his book "The Dilbert Future", which was from 1997, the last 2 chapters are some wacky stuff about manifesting - i.e if you write something down 100 times a day every day it will come true and other stuff like that.
And while that may seem a far cry from the alt-right stuff he eschews, its really not - inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking.
- orionsbelt 1y agoManifesting is not that wacky. Of course, you are not going to write down that you will win the lottery and then win. But most people are their own worst enemy and self limiting to some extent. Focusing on what you want in life, and affirming it to yourself over and over, is effectively a way to brain wash yourself to change your own self limiting behavior and it’s not surprising that this is often successful.
- phlipski 1y agoI'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!
- HK-NC 1y ago[flagged]
- tim333 1y agoAlso telling other people can help as some of them may be able to help you get there.
- ActorNightly 1y agoFiguring on what you actually want in life and working towards that is productive, yes. But that's mild compared to what he says. He basically says he can influence the stock market with affirmations. You should read the chapters. https://www.scribd.com/doc/156175634/the-dilbert-future-pdf https://www.scribd.com/doc/156175634/the-dilbert-future-pdf. Starts on 218.
- teddyh 1y ago> He basically says he can influence the stock market with affirmations. He does not say that. > Starts on 218. Actually it’s page 246.
- dsizzle 1y agoMore like he says the affirmations result in stock market premonitions. For example, he said after his "I will get rich in the stock market" manifestation he woke up in the middle of the night thinking "buy Chrysler" before it went on a rally.
- XenophileJKO 1y agoI mean if the affirmations make your brain, both conscious and unconscious, fixate on thinking about market conditions and purchasing opportunities, this passes my smell test. A premonition is a fancy name for an unconscious prediction. Now does are the predictions "good", that is a completely different story. Probably depends on the information going in.
- robocat 1y ago> A premonition is a fancy name for an unconscious prediction The problem with woo is you can always add more woo (bonus points if it has sciencey glitter). Goes from woowoo to woowoowoo. Woo has no logical consistency and has nothing predictably predictive. Ask manifestation believers why they are not successful or rich or whatever? You'll hear some fabulous reasons. My neighbour paid money (I presume thousands) to do courses on learning how to unblock herself. The stated reason for the failure to manifest was due to blocks. Her explanation of the material was outrageous. I have yet to see the positive effect on her. I don't manifest, yet I've got things others would like to manifest. Not sure there that fits in with the woo.
- aaronbaugher 1y agoI knew a bunch of people who were really into the "Law of Attraction" woowoo manifestation stuff back in the mid-2000s. That was a good time for it, especially for suburban middle-class American folks like these, for whom life was generally pretty great. When your life is going great, believing that you manifested it just shows how awesome you are and how much the Universe likes you. But after some time goes by and you get pinched in the mortgage crash, or your wife hits you with a divorce, or you get cancer, if you really believe you manifest everything into your life, then you have to believe you manifested the bad stuff too. So why did you do that to yourself? It's a rough belief system then.
- ofalkaed 1y agoIf you actually did it it would not be a simple affirmation for long, your mind will quickly start to wander as the act of writing the same thing over and over becomes more automatic and what your mind will wander towards is what you are writing and staring at. The brainwashing that is happening is that of brainwashing you to set aside a part of your day for sustained focused thought on your goals, something most people seem to have never learned, they learned to ask their guidance concealer and google and internet forums but never themselves.
- codr7 1y agoDepends on how well trained your mind is. Some minds only think when asked to.
- Lerc 1y agoIt has a degree of benefit in helping you identify focus, but much of the purported benefits come from having the skills required to obtain your goals being quite correlated with the ability to do a chosen task every single day. A lot of time has past since I read Scott Adams view on manifesting. I got a decent way through before I realised it wasn't satire. It did seem clear to me that he was advocating a form of manifesting that went beyond either of those principles. That benefits came from manifesting in ways that no-other influence from yourself would be possible. That's essentially declaring it to be magic. Psychology I can believe, if you want me to believe in magic you're going to need a bit more. From the point of view of an ADHD person, it doesn't surprise me at all that someone who had the ability to do a dumb task like manifesting would also have the ability to do meaningful things that that I find nearly impossible.
- concordDance 1y ago> inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking. Can we not do this kind of thing please?
- ActorNightly 1y ago[flagged]
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoSorry man. This is the new HN. It is a shame, but things do change.
- aredox 1y agoWhy can't we examine factually the thinking that pushes policy affecting millions of citizens by repeateadly claiming "Americans won't pay tarriffs"? And does it over and ove again, on DEI, immigrants, transexuals, their politcal opposition, etc.? Why should we always handle the topic with kiddy gloves when it is staring us in the face and breaking thousands of lives? Isn't that literaly "political correctness"?
- concordDance 1y agoExamining is fine in my book. But examining the ability to think of recognizably distinct demographics should be done with great care and sensitivity. And that was not an examination, just some low effort attacks on the out group.
- sfpityparty 1y ago[flagged]
- freejazz 1y agoLol, Garry Shandling "manifested" if you deeply care enough about something to actually spend the time to write it out 100 times in a day, you might also take some other actions...
- rockostrich 1y agoI can't find anything super relevant while searching for Shandling and manifesting, but considering he was known for being a practicing Buddhist and a big proponent of meditation I wouldn't be surprised if he believed that writing down his goals is a good first step in achieving them. Adams's version of manifesting is "if you write stuff down, it's more likely that outcomes outside of your control will help you achieve your goal." Those are not the same thing.
- thephyber 1y agoThis concept was popularized by the book The Secret. The concept of the book, as I understand it, is focusing your consciousness on something you want ”will cause the universe to bring it to you”. The concept is silly to me (it’s the steps that you take to actually achieve the goal that make the difference), but in a way, it is a prerequisite to achieving the goal. My biggest complaint is this type of thinking usually accompanies lots of “woo” thinking.
- WalterBright 1y agoWhat it can do is change your perception of reality, and then you can see the path to getting what you want. Our perceptions of reality are nearly always wrong.
- freejazz 1y agoIt was well before he was a buddhist. Did you see The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling? There's pages and pages of him writing down how great he will be... > Those are not the same thing. Here's an idea: get informed on the basics of what you are discussing before you tell me what it is and isn't.
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- JCattheATM 1y ago[flagged]
- earnestinger 1y agoAre you equating conservatism with flat earth crowd?
- thesuitonym 1y agoFlat earthers do tend to favor specific types of politicians.
- JCattheATM 1y agoMore the 'vaccines cause autism', 'evolution isn't real' and 'jewish space lasers' crowds, and for good reason. Not all conservatives believes those things, but the people that do are overwhelmingly conservatives. May as well add in all the "they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats!" people as well.
- alabastervlog 1y agoA lot of flat earthers shifted over to Qanon. [EDIT] Which is unsurprising since the whole flat earth deal requires some sort of vast lizard-person conspiracy or whatever, and that's the kind of thing Qanon is, too.
- detourdog 1y agoThe problem I see with this question is that people currently claiming the conservative mantle in the US don't demonstrate conservative values. How conservative was DOGE's effort to save money. The story was conservative but the actions were radical. I wouldn't equate conservatism with the flat earth crowd. I would equate the current majority closer to flat earthers than Columbus.
- JCattheATM 1y agoPretty sure DOGE actually ended up costing the government more money than it saved. The entire venture was a disaster to highlight a meme. It would be funny if it wasn't so depressing.
- alabastervlog 1y ago> And while that may seem a far cry from the alt-right stuff he eschews The podcast If Books Could Kill manages to stumble on a fair amount of overlap between "power of positive thinking" / "The Secret" crap, and right wing politics in the books they review.
- zdragnar 1y agoThere's nothing unique to right wing politics about it. The sheer volume of "woo" and positive affirmation manifestation among my friends is vastly higher on the left side of the spectrum than the right. Perhaps it's more to do with extreme personalities and wishful thinking.
- JCattheATM 1y ago> The sheer volume of "woo" and positive affirmation manifestation That stuff is mostly harmless speculation/belief, and isn't equivalent to outright denying reality and seeking 'alternate facts'.
- WillPostForFood 1y ago[flagged]
- malicka 1y agoTell me how you know the women you see walking down the street are real women.
- hennell 1y agoI think the thing with "manifesting" is it's almost impossible to write something down a 100 times a day, everyday without also doing other things about the goal, as it's on your mind so much. Obviously if you write "I'm going to become an olympic athlete" but just sit on a chair nothing will happen. But if you're writing that daily you're going to end up doing more exercise because you're thinking about it. You might spot opportunities that you would otherwise miss because your brain stops skimming over it because it's such a repetitive pathway now. And while that obviously has limits, and is far from the magical technique some might claim - it's very hard to argue against things that work.
- codr7 1y agoOr, quantum physics might actually be onto something. Visualization is a thing, something happens when you can see it happening.
- ActorNightly 1y agoI mean, you can also do enough shrooms to pretty much "experience" anything as reality.
- codr7 1y agoNope, still the same reality, more real even since the filters are off.
- tim333 1y agoReal quantum physics of the sort done by physicists doesn't predict that sort of thing.
- nradov 1y agoThat is misinformation. There is nothing in traditional conservative thinking which depends on inability to process information clearly or think in reality. Those mental deficits can be found across the political spectrum. We might not agree with conservative value systems but let's at least be intellectually honest in our criticisms instead of using strawman arguments.
- ks2048 1y agoI noticed you wrote “traditional conservative thinking”, while the comment above wrote “conservative thinking”. Therein lies a difference.
- throwaway5752 1y ago"eschews" means "To avoid, shun" (https://www.oed.com/dictionary/eschew_v1?tab=meaning_and_use#5236496 https://www.oed.com/dictionary/eschew_v1?tab=meaning_and_use...)
- BjoernKW 1y agoI suppose they meant to say "espouses".
- BeFlatXIII 1y ago> inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking. It is absolutely not a unique failure to conservatives. But it does explain why there is so much interchange between crunchy granola hippies and qanon militias.
- kubb 1y agoThe claim that conservatism is rooted in an inability to process reality is a misrepresentation. The actual cornerstone of conservatism is an instinctual preference for stability, order, and the familiar. The danger arises when this instinct is hijacked by a rigid ideology that resists truth and seeks control rather than continuity. Which is, you know, what the American right is doing.
- mschuster91 1y ago> The actual cornerstone of conservatism is an instinctual preference for stability, order, and the familiar. ... which inevitably breaks down when fundamental assumptions become disproven. And that's the point. Many "moderate" Conservatives still believe in the "trickle down" economy theory or that government debt is inherently bad and a government's budget needs to be balanced. Both have been proven time and time again to be not just wrong, but outright disastrous in their consequences, and yet Germany voted that ideology into chancellorship, not to mention what is currently going on in the US.
- WalterBright 1y ago> government debt is inherently bad and a government's budget needs to be balanced We're going to find out if that is true or not.
- mschuster91 1y agoFor heavens sake WE ALREADY HAVE FOUND THAT OUT. Look at Germany: 16 years of austerity policy have left our infrastructure so thoroughly compromised it literally falls apart - we were damn lucky that that bridge collapse in Dresden end of last year didn't kill anyone! And even in the US you see it with every presidential change: Democrat governments cut services and expenditures because the last Republican cut taxes for the wealthy, the frustration leads to people vote for Republicans who introduce yet another round of billionaire tax cuts and blow up the government debt by untold billions of dollars, rinse and repeat.
- detourdog 1y ago
- neilv 1y ago> you write something down 100 times a day every day it will come true If you are writing "Repetitive Strain Injury".
- yakshaving_jgt 1y agoThis could have been a punchline in a Dilbert comic.
- intalentive 1y agoI think you meant “espouses” not “eschews”.
- mlinhares 1y agoget-rich-quick schemes have been the bread and butter of the self-help/manosphere/conservative environment for quite a while. Its not a mistake that most "famous" people in these circles are either selling courses to make you "rich" or supplements to make you "strong". and with a population desperate for any improvement in life these things end up finding a place, just like all the betting platforms all over the place. the only reason to bet is if you think you'll win.
- fox4587 1y ago> inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking. Ye be needing a mirror, lad. A mirror to help ye pull out the log in yer eye.
- vintermann 1y agoI always had trouble knowing what he actually believed and what he just said for fun/attention/as some sort of experiment in what he could get away with saying. But I do think that the wild admiration of manipulative people was genuine.