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I 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 rai

I 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 work and go down a path most of us at least hadn't foreseen and die having alienated his fans.

d1sxeyes 9mo ago
This is a kind and generous take. I couldn’t agree more.
- johnnyanmac 9mo ago
  I'll just say that I didn't know until now that he was under cancer treatment and I wouldn't wish Cancer on 99.9999999% of the population. I have my opinions on home but he does not not meet that prestigious landmark.
quietbritishjim 9mo ago
> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. It started at roughly the time of his divorce, so it's hard to imagine there's not a connection. But, of course, you're right that we'll never know.
- dkarl 9mo ago
  I suspect that having a family and knowing that blowback from your behavior will affect them is a moderating factor for a lot of people.
  - venndeezl 9mo ago
    I suspect growing up in an era where community, the newspaper, radio and TV spewed religious, racist, and sexist content gradually increased sensory memory related neural activity that fostered biochemical and epigenetic effects that over time become effectively immutable. Not sure why we are being coy about the triggers. Society of his youth and the biology are well documented.
    - NetMageSCW 9mo ago
      So explain the existence of liberals and Democrats in America.
      - venndeezl 9mo ago
        I did. Different genetic expressions. The intelligence to realize language is just memes, not truth. Scott Adams put himself on a pedestal above anyone else in his comics; he was Dilbert. The only smart person in the room. He was always a celebrity obsessed with his own existence. Little difference between him and Tim the Toolman or a Kardashian. Low effort contributor whose work people laughed at due to social desirability bias. No big loss.
        krige 9mo ago
        That's a really wild, miserable reading of the strip. For one, Adams himself was a manager, not an engineer, so he had more in common with the PHB, or even dogbert/catbert than Dilbert. For another, he explicitly said Dilbert was based on a specific, undisclosed person he knew. For yet another, many strips were based on anecdotes/stories sent to Adams by his readers.
        jpadkins 9mo ago
        it doesn't take even a serious reading of Adams to realize he was dogbert, not Dilbert. He mocked Dilbert, he thought he was a loser that did understand how to manipulate the system.
- oliwarner 9mo ago
  His 18yo son overdosed on fentanyl in 2018. I don't want to excuse his opinions but that's the sort of event that can change a person. He did online chats, and did one immediately after. It's a tough watch. https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1046764270128484352 https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1046764270128484352
  - Phemist 9mo ago
    He was already quite vocally pro-Trump during the primaries and 2016 presidential run.
    - machomaster 9mo ago
      He wasn't though. He was simply analyzing the communication styöe of Trump, using his hypnosis knowledge, and explained why and how it was better (more efficient) than the competitors. This turned out to be true, giving him the win, just like Scott Adams predicted. The description of reality is not at all the same as supporting it. "Is" vs. "Ought to be".
      - omnibrain 9mo ago
        His explanation why he endorsed Hillary Clinton was pretty lunatic though.
  - estearum 9mo ago
    Can definitely see how that'd warm someone up to a politician who is crippling drug enforcement capabilities, addiction treatment programs, and addiction research... errr wait.
  - dogsgobork 9mo ago
    His (in)famous sockpuppetry on Metafilter happened back in 2011, so he was a bit off well before his divorce or stepson's death.
    - randycupertino 9mo ago
saalweachter 9mo ago
I don't think Adams represents a particularly uncommon archetype in the engineering world.
- Barrin92 9mo ago
  I'm an engineer and I don't exactly know a lot of engineers who think you can manifest alternative realities into existence with the power of quantum physics, on account of most of us having passed a physics class or two He always seemed like the archetypal "Californian creative who fried his brain with psychedelics and new age woo-woo in the 70s" type
dragonwriter 9mo ago
> 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, They weren't surpressed; he was very open about them from very early on in his career as a comic artist; they were central to his “origin story” and were woven directly into the comics. Its just, for a while, other aspects of his still-recent experience in corporate America gave him other relatable things to say that were mixed in with them, which made it easier to overlook them.
- cptskippy 9mo ago
  Has anyone take the time to prove that out? I was a fan of the comic for years and don't recall there being a lot of casual racism strewn in.
  - jimmydddd 9mo ago
    Even in early (20 yrs before Trump stuff) interviews, Adams said that one of the reasons he tried various businesses out (like the comic) was that his coprorate manager told him that the manager was being strongly discouraged from promoting white men. That's likely what folks are referencing with regard to his "origin story."
    - dragonwriter 9mo ago
      He definitely blamed both the end of his career in banking and at PacBell on alleged discrimination against promoting White men in/into management (and I think he claims responsible people at both told him explicitly that that was the reason he was being passed over). Somewhat later (but still quite a while before what people describe as him “turning”), he would also claim his Dilbert show on UPN was cancelled because he was White, making it the third job he lost for that reason. (More likely, it was cancelled because its audience was both small and White and UPN was, looking at where it had successes and wanting a coherent demographic story to sell to advertisers and in an era where synergies between the appeals of shows on the same network was important to driving ratings, working to rearrange its offerings to focus on targeting Black audiences.)
syntheticnature 9mo ago
While he definitely went off the rails, I first caught a hint, back in the 90s, when his fanclub/e-list was named "Dogbert's New Ruling Class"... and he seemed to take it a bit too seriously.
LiquidSky 9mo ago
>How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. The key is that it seemed like he was Dilbert when he actually always thought of himself as Dogbert.
- optionalsquid 9mo ago
  My impression of Adams, based on his writings on science and more, is that he turned out to be more of a Pointy-Haired Boss
  - LiquidSky 9mo ago
    That's true, but he thought of himself as Dogbert, a superintelligent being superior to everyone around him.
rsynnott 9mo ago
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.
- EvanAnderson 9mo ago
  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.
  - rco8786 9mo ago
    I had this exact experience. Growing up I had nothing but good memories of reading Dilbert over my breakfast cereal, and then laughing as I got into the workforce and realized how accurate the satire was. And then seeing what "he" was actually like just completely threw me for a loop.
    - mcv 9mo ago
      At some point he had a mailinglist called Dogbert's New Ruling Class (DNRC) which would soon come to rule the world. In it he wrote lots of really weird, unhinged, occasionally funny stuff. At the time I thought it was all one massive joke, layers of irony and trolling. But more recently I've been wondering if he was actually serious.
      - _whiteCaps_ 9mo ago
        I still read coworkers as "cow-orkers"
      - profsummergig 9mo ago
        If you could share any links to DNRC related content, I'd love to see it. Can't find anything online, just broken links.
georgeburdell 9mo ago
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.)
- loki49152 9mo ago
  A lot of the people who comment here are techie provincials who literally have no understanding that the things they believe, or at least the things they recite as their beliefs, are ideas that might be analyzed and judged against reality.
- gopher_space 9mo ago
  What’s normal about bigotry? It’s brain damage.
  - DaSHacka 9mo ago
    > What’s normal about bigotry? uh I don't know, try asking almost any person who was born pre-1960? Doubt they all had brain damage. Not that it was necessarily a good thing, but it was certainly 'normal' in many eras throughout time.
    - ceejayoz 9mo ago
      > try asking almost any person who was born pre-1960? Doubt they all had brain damage. Actually, they probably did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead
      - antonymoose 9mo ago
        Leaded fuel existed for a few short decades. Bigotry and tribalism have existed since time immemorial.
jakevoytko 9mo ago
I followed his blog back when he started this descent, and I have a theory that it was hill climbing. He used to blog about pretty innocent stuff; his wife making fun of him for wearing pajama pants in public, behind the scenes on drawing comics, funny business interactions he'd had. But then he started getting taken out of context by various online-only publications, and he'd get a burst of traffic and a bunch of hate mail and then it'd go away. And then he'd get quoted out of context again. I'm not sure if it bothered him, but he started adding preambles to his post, like "hey suchandsuch publication, if you want to take this post out of context, jump to this part right here and skip the rest." I stopped reading around this point. But later when he came out with his "trump is a persuasion god, just like me, and he is playing 4d chess and will be elected president" schtick, it seemed like the natural conclusion of hill climbing controversy. He couldn't be held accountable for the prediction. After all, he's just a comedian with a background in finance, not a politics guy. But it was a hot take on a hot topic that was trying to press buttons. I'm sure he figured out before most people that being a newspaper cartoonist was a downward-trending gig, and that he'd never fully transition to online. But I'm sad that this was how he decided to make the jump to his next act.
- afandian 9mo ago
  Can you define “hill climbing”? Is it a metaphor?
  - jakevoytko 9mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_climbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_climbing <-- applying this for getting more and more engagement
    - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
      Ahh, so that's what I've internally called "The Sharpiro Effect" really is. Though it's still a bigger shame that a philosophy professor would need to resort to this compared to a newpaper cartoonist.
- 9mo ago
mixmastamyk 9mo ago
Most of us have experienced a family member who got caught up in a corporate (or worse) news addiction. It’s so common that we barely remark on it any longer. So I don’t think it’s really a mystery, it can happen to anyone who’s not getting outside enough. My first clue something was wrong was when he didn’t understand the criticism around the Iraq war of the early 2000s. Which even most conservatives have come around now to acknowledge as a disaster.
riazrizvi 9mo ago
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.
- NitpickLawyer 9mo ago
  > 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. This is 100% the case, with very infamous baddies, but people don't want to acknowledge it. It's a sad reality of this always on media we ingest. No idea what can be done, other than slowly ignoring more and more algorithmic stuff, and choose your own adventures based on content providers you have known for a long time, and still have their backbone intact.
  - riazrizvi 9mo ago
    Elements of society slowly wise up to how they are being manipulated, as they are increasingly exposed to it. Now with modern AI the online manipulation tactics are getting worse. So as we find ourselves in that pool of ppl who see what is happening, we just stop using those platforms, and increasingly trust more human-human contact or long form video where people have a chance to state their positions. Perhaps?
    - jpadkins 9mo ago
      I think it may be the opposite. The mass propaganda techniques that worked for so long (i.e. control of the narrative via the big 3 news networks) no longer work in the social media age. So you have a system that is trying more and more extreme tactics to regain control, and you have a population that is more and more agitated because they can see through the curtain and the implications are very unsettling.
- overgard 9mo ago
  I haven't followed everything Scott Adams has done recently (largely because most of his stuff ended up paywalled), but in the past I'd note that he'd have an interesting take on something, possibly hard to defend but not intrinsically "bad", but then he'd get lumped in as having a "bad" opinion by people that just wanted to create headlines. One example was his assertion that Donald Trump was a "master persuader", and much more skilled in his speech then people were giving him credit for. I remember, at the time at least, that he always prefaced it by saying it wasn't in support/antagonism of Trump, just an observation of his skill, but it quickly got turned into "Scott Adams is a MAGA guy." (Since then, I don't know if Adams ever became a MAGA guy or not, but it's an example of how at the time his statements got oversimplified and distorted). Anyway, I saw a lot of examples of that -- he'd have a relatively nuanced take probably expressed too boldly, but people wanted to just lump him in to some narrative they already had going. I think Scott Adams' biggest problem in life (although partially what also made him entertaining), is that he'd kind of pick fights that had little upside for him and a lot of downside.
sys32768 9mo ago
How many of his Coffee with Scott Adams broadcasts did you watch before forming the "off the rails" opinion?
ilamont 9mo ago
Concluding he would need an M.B.A if he wanted to climb the corporate ladder, Adams got into UC Berkeley, with the bank footing the bill. As he closed in on his master’s degree, he learned that an assistant vice president position was opening up but figured he wouldn’t get it because the bank was leaning toward hiring a minority, he said. Adams jumped to Pacific Bell and completed his degree, thinking he was on the fast track to upper management. But in his book, Adams wrote that as was the case at Crocker National, his new employer was also coming under fire for a lack of diversity in its executive ranks. Instead of getting mad, Adams got to drawing. Believing all this was a sign for him to revive his dream of cartooning, he purchased a primer on how to submit a comic strip and went about creating Dilbert. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/scott-adams-dead-dilbert-comic-strip-1236472244/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/scott-ad...
jnwatson 9mo ago
My working hypothesis is that some jobs are inherently isolating and that gradually leads to mental deviance. CEOs and cartoonists are similar in this way. He didn't have peers to challenge him on anything, and after a couple decades of that, he was just high on his own supply. Elon Musk and Kanye West have the same issue.
CrimsonCape 9mo ago
If I understand you correctly, you are considering Adams to be "off the rails" crazy and therefore you are condemning him, for having opinions?
- PlanksVariable 9mo ago
  No, no. It’s more nuanced than that. They were opinions that were different from my own.
rubenflamshep 9mo ago
Behind the bastards did an interesting episode on him. He was always kind of kooky: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZlIuEIgLRNxfJWxiv4asn?si=whZUhbE3T_6WsJc8v-fwig https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZlIuEIgLRNxfJWxiv4asn?si=w...
ody2 9mo ago
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Rastonbury 9mo ago
Looking the timeline of controversies, I reckon he was radicalized by Conservative ragebait twitter, repeating just what was hype then. I'm only aware of these things because I know some people who brought out similar 'hot takes' and 'you need to care about these issues' irl at similar times
mannanj 9mo ago
I think it was that there was a cancel culture censorship type of intensity that occurred while he was able to express before, it particularly latched onto targeting people like him (we all know about and have heard of the intensifying censorship in the last half decade COVID-era) and one of the things I've recently learned is censorship, a form of criticism, has that affect of creating and triggering insecurities which digs us deep into extreme positions. Think of it this way: if you were cancelled and repressed and censored in your own home and unable to express yourself, your efforts to communicate to remain authentic would intensify not die down. Or you die and let yourself morph to the average new censor-ship approved world. Scott wouldn't do that and neither would I. All this to say I think its normal to intensify your opinions and even take on and be pushed to more extremes when you live in a controversial time of "you're either on my side or the other side and theres no acceptable middle gray area.
deleted 9mo ago
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CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand He explains it himself, if you are open to primary source material.
- rsynnott 9mo ago
  A crazy person's account of how they went crazy should not generally be considered reliable.
  - CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
    Isn't his accounting of things the reason you judge him as crazy in the first place? I would assume you aren't just taking your personal opinions, uncritically, from others'.
    - cosmicgadget 9mo ago
      It's one way. Another is to simply observe his words and actions.
  - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
    I started paying attention to him when he got sick. He seemed very reasonable about most things, and extremely insightful about many things. I certainly don’t think he deserved the posthumous label “crazy person.”
    - wat10000 9mo ago
      I started paying attention to him in the 90s and he was already crazy then. The only difference is that he was the fun kind of crazy, talking nonsense about quantum mechanics and such, rather than the disturbing racist crazy he became later on.
    - rsynnott 9mo ago
      I read his one of his books in the 90s, in which he talked about how he believed in magic (specifically a rather hardline interpretation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction_(New_Thought) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction_(New_Thought... via 'quantum' magic). He's been fairly out there for a while.
dennis_jeeves2 9mo ago
>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. No surprises for me. By my standards he was never radicalized just an objective thinker with a flair for humor.
- mattmanser 9mo ago
  Have you read anything of his from that era like Win Bigly? I was expecting something insightful, an insider's view of why the right had coalesced around Trump. Instead it was some of the most awful drivel I have ever read.
jbm 9mo ago
I always thought it was the same as a solid part of his specific cohort and generation; excessive entertainment-style news consumption through the normal rabble rousers. For a group of people who were obsessed with telling me that wrestling was fake, they sure were a group of marks when a guy with a gravelly voice told them what to think. I didn't know about his comments about Black people until today. It's more than a bit pathetic that he devolved into colour-based absurdities so late in life. For someone who could pattern match the reality of life at a large company so effectively, it's unfortunate he couldn't realize he was being played by 4chan trolls and fellow travelers in the media.
Tycho 9mo ago
> “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?
- AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
  You don't have to be into this, just not against.
- Windchaser 9mo ago
  Calling black people a "hate group" is not really standard boomer stuff, I think
sanity 9mo ago
> 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 work and go down a path most of us at least hadn't foreseen and die having alienated his fans. He has plenty of fans right up to the end, it's amazing how people think someone went "off the rails" just because he has a different political opinion.
- suzzer99 9mo ago
  Saying Republicans were going to be hunted down in the street if Biden won is a little more than just having a different political opinion.
  - sanity 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - suzzer99 9mo ago
      Utter nonsense.
      - AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        sanity 9mo ago
        Sounds like a club I'm happy to be part of.
- Mashimo 9mo ago
  What is having fans and going of the rails have to do with each other?
TeeMassive 9mo ago
> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails Why? People all say that but it is never stated how or what he said.
rchaud 9mo ago
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".
- yodsanklai 9mo ago
  > 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.
Romanulus 9mo ago
[dead]
throwaway5752 9mo ago
Aging is lonelier and more stressful than ever. The aging brain is already less flexible and there is a net loss of synapses and brain mass. The internet has become a more unkind and manipulative place that ever. It is making people into the worst version of themselves, to serve the ends of groups that benefit from division. I mourn many things with this news today. RIP Scott Adams.
maxlin 9mo ago
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listenallyall 9mo ago
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- mzl 9mo ago
  Asking someone to give a sharp dividing line in a multi-dimensional bimodal but not discontinuous distribution is just nonsense. In particular, being unable to give that strict difference (that does not exist) is not proof of not believing that the general bimodal groups exist, nor acknowledging that existence, nor saying that there is not general differences between the groups. It is not the gotcha that elementary school biology suggests it would be.
  - listenallyall 9mo ago
    And you're essentially demonstrating my point. Your long, complicated, meaningless comment here - which boils down to sex being impossible to define - is now widely accepted (and is the basis of a Supreme Court case), while someone like Scott Adams who would claim that chromosomes or sex organs (at birth) are indeed sufficient in defining one's sex, is perceived to be "off the rails". It's absurd.
    - mzl 9mo ago
      I said exactly what I wanted to say, in as simple terms as I am capable. The fact that some people insist on reality being simpler than it is does not make it true.
anigbrowl 9mo ago
I had similar feelings of perplexity until one day it dawned on me that Adams' self-insert wasn't Dilbert, but Dogbert.

d1sxeyes 9mo ago

This is a kind and generous take. I couldn’t agree more.

johnnyanmac 9mo ago
I'll just say that I didn't know until now that he was under cancer treatment and I wouldn't wish Cancer on 99.9999999% of the population. I have my opinions on home but he does not not meet that prestigious landmark.

quietbritishjim 9mo ago

> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. It started at roughly the time of his divorce, so it's hard to imagine there's not a connection. But, of course, you're right that we'll never know.

dkarl 9mo ago
I suspect that having a family and knowing that blowback from your behavior will affect them is a moderating factor for a lot of people.
- venndeezl 9mo ago
  I suspect growing up in an era where community, the newspaper, radio and TV spewed religious, racist, and sexist content gradually increased sensory memory related neural activity that fostered biochemical and epigenetic effects that over time become effectively immutable. Not sure why we are being coy about the triggers. Society of his youth and the biology are well documented.
  - NetMageSCW 9mo ago
    So explain the existence of liberals and Democrats in America.
    - venndeezl 9mo ago
      I did. Different genetic expressions. The intelligence to realize language is just memes, not truth. Scott Adams put himself on a pedestal above anyone else in his comics; he was Dilbert. The only smart person in the room. He was always a celebrity obsessed with his own existence. Little difference between him and Tim the Toolman or a Kardashian. Low effort contributor whose work people laughed at due to social desirability bias. No big loss.
      - krige 9mo ago
        That's a really wild, miserable reading of the strip. For one, Adams himself was a manager, not an engineer, so he had more in common with the PHB, or even dogbert/catbert than Dilbert. For another, he explicitly said Dilbert was based on a specific, undisclosed person he knew. For yet another, many strips were based on anecdotes/stories sent to Adams by his readers.
      - jpadkins 9mo ago
        it doesn't take even a serious reading of Adams to realize he was dogbert, not Dilbert. He mocked Dilbert, he thought he was a loser that did understand how to manipulate the system.
oliwarner 9mo ago
His 18yo son overdosed on fentanyl in 2018. I don't want to excuse his opinions but that's the sort of event that can change a person. He did online chats, and did one immediately after. It's a tough watch. https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1046764270128484352 https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1046764270128484352
- Phemist 9mo ago
  He was already quite vocally pro-Trump during the primaries and 2016 presidential run.
  - machomaster 9mo ago
    He wasn't though. He was simply analyzing the communication styöe of Trump, using his hypnosis knowledge, and explained why and how it was better (more efficient) than the competitors. This turned out to be true, giving him the win, just like Scott Adams predicted. The description of reality is not at all the same as supporting it. "Is" vs. "Ought to be".
    - omnibrain 9mo ago
      His explanation why he endorsed Hillary Clinton was pretty lunatic though.
- estearum 9mo ago
  Can definitely see how that'd warm someone up to a politician who is crippling drug enforcement capabilities, addiction treatment programs, and addiction research... errr wait.
- dogsgobork 9mo ago
  His (in)famous sockpuppetry on Metafilter happened back in 2011, so he was a bit off well before his divorce or stepson's death.
  - randycupertino 9mo ago

saalweachter 9mo ago

I don't think Adams represents a particularly uncommon archetype in the engineering world.

Barrin92 9mo ago
I'm an engineer and I don't exactly know a lot of engineers who think you can manifest alternative realities into existence with the power of quantum physics, on account of most of us having passed a physics class or two He always seemed like the archetypal "Californian creative who fried his brain with psychedelics and new age woo-woo in the 70s" type

dragonwriter 9mo ago

> 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, They weren't surpressed; he was very open about them from very early on in his career as a comic artist; they were central to his “origin story” and were woven directly into the comics. Its just, for a while, other aspects of his still-recent experience in corporate America gave him other relatable things to say that were mixed in with them, which made it easier to overlook them.

cptskippy 9mo ago
Has anyone take the time to prove that out? I was a fan of the comic for years and don't recall there being a lot of casual racism strewn in.
- jimmydddd 9mo ago
  Even in early (20 yrs before Trump stuff) interviews, Adams said that one of the reasons he tried various businesses out (like the comic) was that his coprorate manager told him that the manager was being strongly discouraged from promoting white men. That's likely what folks are referencing with regard to his "origin story."
  - dragonwriter 9mo ago
    He definitely blamed both the end of his career in banking and at PacBell on alleged discrimination against promoting White men in/into management (and I think he claims responsible people at both told him explicitly that that was the reason he was being passed over). Somewhat later (but still quite a while before what people describe as him “turning”), he would also claim his Dilbert show on UPN was cancelled because he was White, making it the third job he lost for that reason. (More likely, it was cancelled because its audience was both small and White and UPN was, looking at where it had successes and wanting a coherent demographic story to sell to advertisers and in an era where synergies between the appeals of shows on the same network was important to driving ratings, working to rearrange its offerings to focus on targeting Black audiences.)

syntheticnature 9mo ago

While he definitely went off the rails, I first caught a hint, back in the 90s, when his fanclub/e-list was named "Dogbert's New Ruling Class"... and he seemed to take it a bit too seriously.

LiquidSky 9mo ago

>How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. The key is that it seemed like he was Dilbert when he actually always thought of himself as Dogbert.

optionalsquid 9mo ago
My impression of Adams, based on his writings on science and more, is that he turned out to be more of a Pointy-Haired Boss
- LiquidSky 9mo ago
  That's true, but he thought of himself as Dogbert, a superintelligent being superior to everyone around him.

rsynnott 9mo ago

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.

EvanAnderson 9mo ago
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.
- rco8786 9mo ago
  I had this exact experience. Growing up I had nothing but good memories of reading Dilbert over my breakfast cereal, and then laughing as I got into the workforce and realized how accurate the satire was. And then seeing what "he" was actually like just completely threw me for a loop.
  - mcv 9mo ago
    At some point he had a mailinglist called Dogbert's New Ruling Class (DNRC) which would soon come to rule the world. In it he wrote lots of really weird, unhinged, occasionally funny stuff. At the time I thought it was all one massive joke, layers of irony and trolling. But more recently I've been wondering if he was actually serious.
    - _whiteCaps_ 9mo ago
      I still read coworkers as "cow-orkers"
    - profsummergig 9mo ago
      If you could share any links to DNRC related content, I'd love to see it. Can't find anything online, just broken links.

georgeburdell 9mo ago

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.)

loki49152 9mo ago
A lot of the people who comment here are techie provincials who literally have no understanding that the things they believe, or at least the things they recite as their beliefs, are ideas that might be analyzed and judged against reality.
gopher_space 9mo ago
What’s normal about bigotry? It’s brain damage.
- DaSHacka 9mo ago
  > What’s normal about bigotry? uh I don't know, try asking almost any person who was born pre-1960? Doubt they all had brain damage. Not that it was necessarily a good thing, but it was certainly 'normal' in many eras throughout time.
  - ceejayoz 9mo ago
    > try asking almost any person who was born pre-1960? Doubt they all had brain damage. Actually, they probably did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead
    - antonymoose 9mo ago
      Leaded fuel existed for a few short decades. Bigotry and tribalism have existed since time immemorial.

jakevoytko 9mo ago

I followed his blog back when he started this descent, and I have a theory that it was hill climbing. He used to blog about pretty innocent stuff; his wife making fun of him for wearing pajama pants in public, behind the scenes on drawing comics, funny business interactions he'd had. But then he started getting taken out of context by various online-only publications, and he'd get a burst of traffic and a bunch of hate mail and then it'd go away. And then he'd get quoted out of context again. I'm not sure if it bothered him, but he started adding preambles to his post, like "hey suchandsuch publication, if you want to take this post out of context, jump to this part right here and skip the rest." I stopped reading around this point. But later when he came out with his "trump is a persuasion god, just like me, and he is playing 4d chess and will be elected president" schtick, it seemed like the natural conclusion of hill climbing controversy. He couldn't be held accountable for the prediction. After all, he's just a comedian with a background in finance, not a politics guy. But it was a hot take on a hot topic that was trying to press buttons. I'm sure he figured out before most people that being a newspaper cartoonist was a downward-trending gig, and that he'd never fully transition to online. But I'm sad that this was how he decided to make the jump to his next act.

afandian 9mo ago
Can you define “hill climbing”? Is it a metaphor?
- jakevoytko 9mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_climbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_climbing <-- applying this for getting more and more engagement
  - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
    Ahh, so that's what I've internally called "The Sharpiro Effect" really is. Though it's still a bigger shame that a philosophy professor would need to resort to this compared to a newpaper cartoonist.
9mo ago

mixmastamyk 9mo ago

Most of us have experienced a family member who got caught up in a corporate (or worse) news addiction. It’s so common that we barely remark on it any longer. So I don’t think it’s really a mystery, it can happen to anyone who’s not getting outside enough. My first clue something was wrong was when he didn’t understand the criticism around the Iraq war of the early 2000s. Which even most conservatives have come around now to acknowledge as a disaster.

riazrizvi 9mo ago

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.

NitpickLawyer 9mo ago
> 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. This is 100% the case, with very infamous baddies, but people don't want to acknowledge it. It's a sad reality of this always on media we ingest. No idea what can be done, other than slowly ignoring more and more algorithmic stuff, and choose your own adventures based on content providers you have known for a long time, and still have their backbone intact.
- riazrizvi 9mo ago
  Elements of society slowly wise up to how they are being manipulated, as they are increasingly exposed to it. Now with modern AI the online manipulation tactics are getting worse. So as we find ourselves in that pool of ppl who see what is happening, we just stop using those platforms, and increasingly trust more human-human contact or long form video where people have a chance to state their positions. Perhaps?
  - jpadkins 9mo ago
    I think it may be the opposite. The mass propaganda techniques that worked for so long (i.e. control of the narrative via the big 3 news networks) no longer work in the social media age. So you have a system that is trying more and more extreme tactics to regain control, and you have a population that is more and more agitated because they can see through the curtain and the implications are very unsettling.
overgard 9mo ago
I haven't followed everything Scott Adams has done recently (largely because most of his stuff ended up paywalled), but in the past I'd note that he'd have an interesting take on something, possibly hard to defend but not intrinsically "bad", but then he'd get lumped in as having a "bad" opinion by people that just wanted to create headlines. One example was his assertion that Donald Trump was a "master persuader", and much more skilled in his speech then people were giving him credit for. I remember, at the time at least, that he always prefaced it by saying it wasn't in support/antagonism of Trump, just an observation of his skill, but it quickly got turned into "Scott Adams is a MAGA guy." (Since then, I don't know if Adams ever became a MAGA guy or not, but it's an example of how at the time his statements got oversimplified and distorted). Anyway, I saw a lot of examples of that -- he'd have a relatively nuanced take probably expressed too boldly, but people wanted to just lump him in to some narrative they already had going. I think Scott Adams' biggest problem in life (although partially what also made him entertaining), is that he'd kind of pick fights that had little upside for him and a lot of downside.

sys32768 9mo ago

How many of his Coffee with Scott Adams broadcasts did you watch before forming the "off the rails" opinion?

ilamont 9mo ago

Concluding he would need an M.B.A if he wanted to climb the corporate ladder, Adams got into UC Berkeley, with the bank footing the bill. As he closed in on his master’s degree, he learned that an assistant vice president position was opening up but figured he wouldn’t get it because the bank was leaning toward hiring a minority, he said. Adams jumped to Pacific Bell and completed his degree, thinking he was on the fast track to upper management. But in his book, Adams wrote that as was the case at Crocker National, his new employer was also coming under fire for a lack of diversity in its executive ranks. Instead of getting mad, Adams got to drawing. Believing all this was a sign for him to revive his dream of cartooning, he purchased a primer on how to submit a comic strip and went about creating Dilbert. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/scott-adams-dead-dilbert-comic-strip-1236472244/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/scott-ad...

jnwatson 9mo ago

My working hypothesis is that some jobs are inherently isolating and that gradually leads to mental deviance. CEOs and cartoonists are similar in this way. He didn't have peers to challenge him on anything, and after a couple decades of that, he was just high on his own supply. Elon Musk and Kanye West have the same issue.

CrimsonCape 9mo ago

If I understand you correctly, you are considering Adams to be "off the rails" crazy and therefore you are condemning him, for having opinions?

PlanksVariable 9mo ago
No, no. It’s more nuanced than that. They were opinions that were different from my own.

rubenflamshep 9mo ago

Behind the bastards did an interesting episode on him. He was always kind of kooky: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZlIuEIgLRNxfJWxiv4asn?si=whZUhbE3T_6WsJc8v-fwig https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZlIuEIgLRNxfJWxiv4asn?si=w...

ody2 9mo ago

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Rastonbury 9mo ago

Looking the timeline of controversies, I reckon he was radicalized by Conservative ragebait twitter, repeating just what was hype then. I'm only aware of these things because I know some people who brought out similar 'hot takes' and 'you need to care about these issues' irl at similar times

mannanj 9mo ago

I think it was that there was a cancel culture censorship type of intensity that occurred while he was able to express before, it particularly latched onto targeting people like him (we all know about and have heard of the intensifying censorship in the last half decade COVID-era) and one of the things I've recently learned is censorship, a form of criticism, has that affect of creating and triggering insecurities which digs us deep into extreme positions. Think of it this way: if you were cancelled and repressed and censored in your own home and unable to express yourself, your efforts to communicate to remain authentic would intensify not die down. Or you die and let yourself morph to the average new censor-ship approved world. Scott wouldn't do that and neither would I. All this to say I think its normal to intensify your opinions and even take on and be pushed to more extremes when you live in a controversial time of "you're either on my side or the other side and theres no acceptable middle gray area.

deleted 9mo ago

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CGMthrowaway 9mo ago

> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand He explains it himself, if you are open to primary source material.

rsynnott 9mo ago
A crazy person's account of how they went crazy should not generally be considered reliable.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
  Isn't his accounting of things the reason you judge him as crazy in the first place? I would assume you aren't just taking your personal opinions, uncritically, from others'.
  - cosmicgadget 9mo ago
    It's one way. Another is to simply observe his words and actions.
- PlanksVariable 9mo ago
  I started paying attention to him when he got sick. He seemed very reasonable about most things, and extremely insightful about many things. I certainly don’t think he deserved the posthumous label “crazy person.”
  - wat10000 9mo ago
    I started paying attention to him in the 90s and he was already crazy then. The only difference is that he was the fun kind of crazy, talking nonsense about quantum mechanics and such, rather than the disturbing racist crazy he became later on.
  - rsynnott 9mo ago
    I read his one of his books in the 90s, in which he talked about how he believed in magic (specifically a rather hardline interpretation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction_(New_Thought) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction_(New_Thought... via 'quantum' magic). He's been fairly out there for a while.

dennis_jeeves2 9mo ago

>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. No surprises for me. By my standards he was never radicalized just an objective thinker with a flair for humor.

mattmanser 9mo ago
Have you read anything of his from that era like Win Bigly? I was expecting something insightful, an insider's view of why the right had coalesced around Trump. Instead it was some of the most awful drivel I have ever read.

jbm 9mo ago

I always thought it was the same as a solid part of his specific cohort and generation; excessive entertainment-style news consumption through the normal rabble rousers. For a group of people who were obsessed with telling me that wrestling was fake, they sure were a group of marks when a guy with a gravelly voice told them what to think. I didn't know about his comments about Black people until today. It's more than a bit pathetic that he devolved into colour-based absurdities so late in life. For someone who could pattern match the reality of life at a large company so effectively, it's unfortunate he couldn't realize he was being played by 4chan trolls and fellow travelers in the media.

Tycho 9mo ago

> “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?

AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
You don't have to be into this, just not against.
Windchaser 9mo ago
Calling black people a "hate group" is not really standard boomer stuff, I think

sanity 9mo ago

> 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 work and go down a path most of us at least hadn't foreseen and die having alienated his fans. He has plenty of fans right up to the end, it's amazing how people think someone went "off the rails" just because he has a different political opinion.

suzzer99 9mo ago
Saying Republicans were going to be hunted down in the street if Biden won is a little more than just having a different political opinion.
- sanity 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - suzzer99 9mo ago
    Utter nonsense.
    - AlexeyBelov 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - sanity 9mo ago
        Sounds like a club I'm happy to be part of.
Mashimo 9mo ago
What is having fans and going of the rails have to do with each other?

TeeMassive 9mo ago

> How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails Why? People all say that but it is never stated how or what he said.

rchaud 9mo ago

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".

yodsanklai 9mo ago
> 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.

Romanulus 9mo ago

[dead]

throwaway5752 9mo ago

Aging is lonelier and more stressful than ever. The aging brain is already less flexible and there is a net loss of synapses and brain mass. The internet has become a more unkind and manipulative place that ever. It is making people into the worst version of themselves, to serve the ends of groups that benefit from division. I mourn many things with this news today. RIP Scott Adams.

maxlin 9mo ago

[flagged]

listenallyall 9mo ago

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mzl 9mo ago
Asking someone to give a sharp dividing line in a multi-dimensional bimodal but not discontinuous distribution is just nonsense. In particular, being unable to give that strict difference (that does not exist) is not proof of not believing that the general bimodal groups exist, nor acknowledging that existence, nor saying that there is not general differences between the groups. It is not the gotcha that elementary school biology suggests it would be.
- listenallyall 9mo ago
  And you're essentially demonstrating my point. Your long, complicated, meaningless comment here - which boils down to sex being impossible to define - is now widely accepted (and is the basis of a Supreme Court case), while someone like Scott Adams who would claim that chromosomes or sex organs (at birth) are indeed sufficient in defining one's sex, is perceived to be "off the rails". It's absurd.
  - mzl 9mo ago
    I said exactly what I wanted to say, in as simple terms as I am capable. The fact that some people insist on reality being simpler than it is does not make it true.

anigbrowl 9mo ago

I had similar feelings of perplexity until one day it dawned on me that Adams' self-insert wasn't Dilbert, but Dogbert.