I posted recently in another thread about the entire through line of Dilbert really souring with me as I've grown and matured. Namely that everyone in charge of everything is a moron, and if only...
Exemplary
I posted recently in another thread about the entire through line of Dilbert really souring with me as I've grown and matured.
Namely that everyone in charge of everything is a moron, and if only the super smart engineers were in charge, we'd be living in a utopia.
When I was young and thought of myself as a super smart engineer, that worldview was pretty compelling. I'm sure a lot of Dilbert's hardcore audience falls into that category as well.
As I grew older, met different types of people, got exposed to different kinds of organizations and societies, and most importantly, kept an open mind, I learned that that wasn't quite right.
Firstly, I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was. I knew a lot about a few small areas of expertise, but there is so much more of the world than computer programming, or networking, or electronics. Many of those things are at least as useful and important to human well being as the "nerdy" disciplines that the people who love Dilbert are good at.
Secondly, I learned that there are many different types of intelligence. Being able to relate to people and empathize with them requires intelligence. Being persuasive and having the ability to rally many different types of people to one cause requires intelligence. Being able to juggle a lot of competing and antithical priorities so that everyone is at least somewhat happy requires intelligence.
Those aspects aren't inheritely more or less valuable than computer programming, but they are indisputably valuable.
Third, I learned over many painful and introspective experiences to humble myself. Even in my area of expertise, there are many people more talented and intelligent than I am, and there always will be. Even though I do have talent and intelligence, people with less experience and exposure to my field can and do provide suggestions I haven't thought about before, and it's worth at least giving them a cursory think.
There are many people who never learned these lessons, because they never wandered from their comfortable bubble, and spend all their time hanging out with other nerdy white guys around their same age. Or they have, but never did so with an open mind, and instead went through the world assured of their own superiority.
I'd rather deal with a team full of pointy haired bosses than a team full of those guys, because neither would get anything done, but the bosses would at least be able to hold a conversation about something other than video games.
I think the brand of Adams' intellectual nerdy "rational" elitism is an artifact of an earlier time that you'd don't see as much anymore. Unfortunately it seems to have been replaced by a flavor of what he became in his latter years; bigoted self assuredness based on absolutely nothing except the Bible and vibes.
On the other thread, I already thought your words were very wise, and I'm glad you expanded on that thought with examples from your own life, how your worldview matured. The axiom, that "the world...
Exemplary
On the other thread, I already thought your words were very wise, and I'm glad you expanded on that thought with examples from your own life, how your worldview matured.
The axiom, that "the world is full of idiots", isn't where the true error lies. It's the second half, that "I am smarter than the world full of idiots". If we accept the first, reject the second, we might safely arrive at "the world is full of idiots, and I am chief among them" -- we can all laugh together, I can laugh at myself, and I can still expect to learn a lot of fun and exciting things from the other idiots all the time. Best of all, I will come to discover what you did: that there are a lot of very genuinely very smart people wielding a lot of different kinds of intelligence. The idiots do come into some fortune and power: afterall, I'm not doing too shabby myself. But what a better world when it's also quite full of smart people who try very hard and make a lot of good happen.
Scott Adam's comics were fun when he leaned into the first half, making fun of PHB and also at Dilbert being a dummy. They got less fun when he started acting like the only smart person in the world.
I was gonna say, an awful lot of Dilbert was also poking fun at the engineers as well. At least with the 90s Dilbert I was consuming as a teen, the closest I ever saw to full beating-down was on...
I was gonna say, an awful lot of Dilbert was also poking fun at the engineers as well.
At least with the 90s Dilbert I was consuming as a teen, the closest I ever saw to full beating-down was on salespeople. And I have yet to meet an engineer that does not hate the average salesperson whom is abstracted from the consequences of their promises.
Several of my friends have made it up the management ladder now (in 40s) from gruntwork... one has gone from college dropout to 'just below VP' of a fairly prominent org. The difficulties of good management are real, but good managers convey this to their reports. But, there is always at least one PHB in any medium+ org and if the CEO is of equivalent standing it can result in many Dilbertesqe moments.
My one friend, the one highest in the management chain, was told by the CEO to deploy a whole AI learning interface in 40 days from 0. With a staff of like 4 and no clear requirements. His engineers were superheros that made it happen in the face of arbitray stupid demands. And one then got laid off 'because they had to tighten the belt'.
Another has done very much work as a contractor for the military, so understands why they'll spend $100k flying out the engineer who designed the system to come flip a breaker instead of reading the detailed technical manual that was written. But it doesn't bode well for appearances.
And the third has been thrown into a trial by fire. With one peer manager in particular that makes everyone else's lives a living hell my micromanaging and arbitrary punishments (like a staffer being reperimanded for 3 monitors instead of 2 on desk).
And the last is an engineer whom reported to the CEO of a small business. A CEO who drives a new BMW while claiming that a $40k bonus to the engineer who almost singlehandedly delivered on $5 mil in contracts is unreasonable. A CEO who refuses to let the company get larger tham 48 people so he doesn't have to give FMLA leave.
The 'quantity of Dilbert relates to toxicity' is certainly a relatable one, but it's hardly a function of immaturity and antisocial behavior at the bottom.
There are many different types of intelligence, almost as many as there are types of stupidity. The real maturity is knowing that we all posess far more of the latter than the former.
The biggest problem is that managers think their different intelligence and stress justifies earning multiples of their report's wages. For some reason those 20%+ annual bonuses stop trickling down, and become 3.6% raises at best. Seeing your boss make double you while continually ruining your life because they ignore your wisdom and it bites back every 6 months causes a lot of Dilbert comic proliferation.
The second biggest is leaders who trust a salesperson over the collective wisdom of the staff that would be installing, managing, and using said product.
Even the "salesperson" role has matured and professionalized in good organizations - we have "customer success managers" who have to sell, mitigate the complaints when the products they've sold...
Even the "salesperson" role has matured and professionalized in good organizations - we have "customer success managers" who have to sell, mitigate the complaints when the products they've sold don't perform as expected, and maintain long-term relationships with partner vendors.
That "aligns the incentives" much better than the old days where Sales could blame everyone else for failing to deliver. They actually have to get the technical teams to sign off on system design and programming before completing a sale, work out scheduling with a project manager and installing vendor, and enlist support and engineering on fixes and improvements.
I've worked with old-school "Dilbert" organizations and better managed companies. Aside from the way pay scales across the hierarchy (winner-take-all CEO salaries), there really are companies with fewer unmitigated PHBs, and generally more distributed accountability than in Scott Adams' Pacific Bell experience.
Yes. In my experience, the difference between managers and engineers (technical staff) is that managers are able to use politics to game the system to their advantage. They can extract limited...
Yes.
In my experience, the difference between managers and engineers (technical staff) is that managers are able to use politics to game the system to their advantage. They can extract limited resources, money, or power from a company and often harm the company and the other employees in the process.
I've experienced many managers who blow into a company, amass some power and wealth, waste a bunch of money and time with ill-conceived projects, then leave to go do the same elsewhere. I don't see engineers do this.
This is true of society at large. The people who have the most success are usually politicians at some level, and they use political skills to manipulate systems to enrich themselves at the expense of others. The technical people are more interested in "the work", whatever that is, because it's interesting for them to solve puzzles and fix things.
I'm not saying that managers are generally evil or something. It's just that they are more likely to have skills that result in a tragedy of the commons.
Good managers aren't gaming the system to personal advantage, they're bridges between technical necessities and business goals; umbrellas who shield their teams from the upper level bullshit that...
Good managers aren't gaming the system to personal advantage, they're bridges between technical necessities and business goals; umbrellas who shield their teams from the upper level bullshit that rains down in ignorance of ground reality; bulldozers clearing obstacles for their subordinates to get work done; and ladders that foster career growth for their teammates.
I've had some great role models in this regard, including people who rose through the technical ranks and broadened their skills to be able to function in all those different capacities. I'm not a manager anymore because it's incredibly stressful and demanding to flex constantly like that. Solving puzzles and fixing things is practically retirement for me.
That's not to say I've never met the toxic sociopaths and Dunning-Kruger School of Management graduates. They're blessedly much rarer than the good managers, but they're damaging enough to merit the negativity bias.
When you encounter actions that don't make sense to you, there are two common reactions: "I must be missing something" or "that person is an idiot". We all do both, but the more skewed your ratio...
When you encounter actions that don't make sense to you, there are two common reactions: "I must be missing something" or "that person is an idiot". We all do both, but the more skewed your ratio is towards number 2, the less you're going to learn about the world in the course of your life. I think most of us learn and work on this as we age. Most of us.
When I was a kid there was some sort of local political scandal where someone wasted a ton of money on something useless. I couldn't believe what a moron that guy was. Even as a child. How could...
When I was a kid there was some sort of local political scandal where someone wasted a ton of money on something useless. I couldn't believe what a moron that guy was. Even as a child. How could he really think that was a good use of the town's money.
Of course it all came out later that it was a scam. The guy was getting kickbacks from a friend's business or something. He wasn't an idiot that didn't understand the value of money. He was just stealing it.
Thankfully, we have updated buildings standards to help us differentiate between those things in houses. I'm half convinced that everybody who built houses in the mid sixties was either drunk or high.
Thankfully, we have updated buildings standards to help us differentiate between those things in houses.
I'm half convinced that everybody who built houses in the mid sixties was either drunk or high.
Thank you for that. I think you're right. Maybe a better way to put it instead of "we're all smart in our own way" would be "we're all idiots in our own way". I can personally attest with 100%...
Thank you for that. I think you're right. Maybe a better way to put it instead of "we're all smart in our own way" would be "we're all idiots in our own way".
I can personally attest with 100% certainly that the latter is true.
Edit: I just thought of a story I was telling my dad the other day about me trying to build a wooden box that illustrates this well. I had to build a small wooden box for some electronics I wanted to put outside. Easy. Six sides, rabbet joints on the table saw, glue, join, and clamp.
It ended up taking me all day.
I could NOT get this thing to line up. I measured. I put one side on top of the rabbet, that didn't work, I had the rabbet join a different way. Nope, still had a gap on one side, or it was too big. I swear to god I spent three hours on the floor of my garage trying to put this six pieced thing together like a five year old playing with his first lego set.
It was a huge blow to my ego, because as I mentioned earlier, I like to think of myself as a smart guy. I was sitting on the floor in my mid 30s, unable to assemble a box, and I felt like the stupidest motherfucker in the entire world.
If someone with any sort of experience with woodworking, or really anyone with basic spatial intelligence saw my attempts, they'd probably think I had a legitimate mental deficiency and feel bad for me. Maybe I actually do have a legitimate mental deficiency in that arena.
It's those kinds of experiences that I think certain types of people (one of whom name may vaguely rhyme with... sealion tusk) should really introspect on and hammer home the point that no one is good at everything. We're all absolute mouth breathing morons sometimes.
Every specialized expert seeking to step out of their comfort zone ought to spend some time on shoshin, or "beginner's mind". It's natural to feel like an idiot when you're doing something you've...
Every specialized expert seeking to step out of their comfort zone ought to spend some time on shoshin, or "beginner's mind".
It's natural to feel like an idiot when you're doing something you've never done before. It's easy to forget that you became a genius at X mainly because you practiced it constantly from an early age, rather than through some mystic innate talent. We've all been steeped in the mythos of Spearman's g, so we assume mastering new things should be as seemingly simple and painless as whatever our unique genius was.
If we all had the patience and compassion to stop treating ourselves and others as "idiots", maybe people would be more open and willing to get out of their cognitive ruts and expand their capabilities.
Hardware space is the worst, I always say. Whenever I'm building anything, even a mere four sided tiny fence around a 1m² flower bed, it's all wobbly and not straight and just generally terrible....
Hardware space is the worst, I always say. Whenever I'm building anything, even a mere four sided tiny fence around a 1m² flower bed, it's all wobbly and not straight and just generally terrible. When my kid was learning to cut shapes with a craft knife, it's all kinds of annoying as well because things just don't slide like they do on a tablet swiping up. For your box, do you have one of those three way corner clamp things that keep stuff orthogonal in xyz? It was a game changer for me
Nah. Just an absurd amount of c clamps. I eventually figured it out, but it took an absurd about of trial and error, and I think I eventually just recut everything. I learned that there are dozens...
Nah. Just an absurd amount of c clamps. I eventually figured it out, but it took an absurd about of trial and error, and I think I eventually just recut everything.
I learned that there are dozens of ways for double rabbet joints to sit on a box, and if you don't plan out exactly how yours will sit, and write them down, you're almost guaranteed to have something that doesn't fit. If I ever have to do it again, single rabbets only. Or if I'm in the mood to feel like a complete idiot on an even higher scale again, maybe I'll try dovetails.
I had a similar journey to you and have similarly reached a point where I value thoughtful inquisitiveness and humility over pride and intelligence in myself and my coworkers. I agree about the...
I had a similar journey to you and have similarly reached a point where I value thoughtful inquisitiveness and humility over pride and intelligence in myself and my coworkers.
I think the brand of Adams' intellectual nerdy "rational" elitism is an artifact of an earlier time that you'd don't see as much anymore. Unfortunately it seems to have been replaced by a flavor of what he became in his latter years; bigoted self assuredness based on absolutely nothing except the Bible and vibes.
I agree about the shift. I think one of the factors that has changed a lot from the 90's to now is that nerdity has really moved from the margins of culture to the mainstream. Things like star wars, star trek (maybe less so), science fiction and fantasy, even comics. The counterculture / outsider vibe was a big part of being a nerd in the 90s.
In the 90s, programmers saw themselves as hackers, another countercultural posture. I have this quote in my database:
Real programmers don’t work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am, it’s because they were up all night.
~ Tom Van Vleck
Now, programming has become "software engineering," and the whole discipline has moved toward professionalism. Most programmers do work a normal office day.
But, as you observe, that outsider / persecution complex /counterculture element migrated to other places, like the incel/toxic masculinity community. The religious right has adopted the persecution complex even though (imo) they are doing most of the persecuting these days.
Yeah. I grew up in those counter culture days, and I miss that feeling. I used to idolize hackers in movies and news stories. Kevin Mitnick was a hero to me who was sticking it to the man and...
Yeah. I grew up in those counter culture days, and I miss that feeling. I used to idolize hackers in movies and news stories. Kevin Mitnick was a hero to me who was sticking it to the man and forcing the system to confront it's own hypocrisy. I thought that the proliferation of information technology would usher in a new golden age free from ignorance. "Information wants to be free" and all that.
Looking back, it was naive from the outset, yes, but also, there was some innocence lost when everyone involved saw that information technology ended up just being one out of many tools that could be used to liberate people, or to oppress people, or to control people, or to profit off of people, just like any human invention before it. It wasn't inheritely good, and it didn't want anything.
I think many of us sort of realized that maybe our parents and teachers were on to something when they said that the world is complicated, and few things are truly so black and white. Many didn't, and it seems like most of those people have doubled down to the two places where large swathes of people do believe that the world is simple, black and white, with clear good and evil; religion and reactionary politics.
A lot of people have a hard time with how left/libertarian leaning tech nerds who were militantly atheist morphed into the conservative Christian Thielites we have today. When viewed through that lens, it makes perfect sense.
There needed to be good guys and bad guys. The bad guys were the old out of touch rich people who controlled the world. Once the nerds got old enough and rich enough to be the people who controlled the world, a new answer had to emerge for why the world sucked still.
It’s kind of amazing how one’s perspective narrows and broadens over time. Personally, I was really negative about the newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans produced under RFK Jr....
It’s kind of amazing how one’s perspective narrows and broadens over time. Personally, I was really negative about the newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans produced under RFK Jr. recently. Between the return of the food pyramid, the contradictory advice on saturated fats, and that absolutely stupid “ending the war on protein” line, it just seemed crazy. Then I came across a PBS show with a panel talking about it and they pointed out that in spite of those obvious deficiencies it was the most progressive DGA released to date, even acknowledging the problems with ultra processed food. Yes, it was obviously still tainted with the beef and dairy industry and their propaganda, but every version of the guidelines has been also.
It just goes to show that even people you disagree with with are still doing their best to make a better world. As much as I am in the “punch fascists” team, we’ll never truly be rid of them and we should probably still try to understand them (which very clearly doesn’t include trusting them with power).
Yeah. I have a soft side for RFK Jr. in general compared to the rest of the administration. Yes, he's overconfident in his knowledge and abilities. Yes, he probably has some severe undiagnosed...
Yeah. I have a soft side for RFK Jr. in general compared to the rest of the administration. Yes, he's overconfident in his knowledge and abilities. Yes, he probably has some severe undiagnosed mental issues. Yes, he is, and will continue to be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of kids because of irresponsible rhetoric about vaccines.
All that said, he's the only prominent member of the Trump administration that doesn't seem to be intentionally destroying the country. I believe that he's legitimately trying to help people in his own unhinged totally unqualified way, and MAGA was the bitter pill he had to swallow to do that in his mind. I don't get the same level of pure hatred from him, even towards his critics that I do from the rest of the Trump administration, and I think if he got out of his own ass and were more open to listening to actual scientists and taking their advice instead of stuff he saw on YouTube and shady websites, he could actually be a somewhat effective HHS director. Maybe I'm just not paying attention enough though.
Yes, I haven't kept close tabs on him because it's all so depressing, but he does seem to relent under pressure from actual experts. At first he wasn't going to go ahead with a new flu vaccine for...
Yes, I haven't kept close tabs on him because it's all so depressing, but he does seem to relent under pressure from actual experts. At first he wasn't going to go ahead with a new flu vaccine for this winter, but I got mine a couple of months ago.
I just want to point out that this, and its consequences, is exactly what the article that this linked article is responding to is all about. It goes deeper, shows examples of his opinions from...
I just want to point out that this, and its consequences, is exactly what the article that this linked article is responding to is all about. It goes deeper, shows examples of his opinions from non-Dilbert sources, his personal development, and also has some funny or accurate jabs at him or at nerds as a whole (the author also being one and, like all of us, having to go through the conflict of realizing early on that we're not as capable as we thought as teenagers).
I enjoy mildly offensive observations, so I liked this passage in particular, but the rest of the article is otherwise quite kind and empathetic:
Every nerd who was the smartest kid in their high school goes to an appropriately-ranked college and realizes they’re nothing special. But also, once they go into some specific field they find that intellect, as versatile as it is, can only take them so far. And for someone who was told their whole childhood that they were going to cure cancer (alas, a real quote from my elementary school teacher), it’s a tough pill to swallow.
Reaction formation, where you replace a unbearable feeling with its exact opposite, is one of the all time great Freudian defense mechanisms. You may remember it from such classics as “rape victims fall in love with their rapist” or “secretly gay people become really homophobic”. So some percent of washed-up gifted kids compensate by really, really hating nerdiness, rationality, and the intellect.
The variety of self-hating nerd are too many to number. There are the nerds who go into psychology to prove that EQ is a real thing and IQ merely its pale pathetic shadow. There are the nerds who become super-woke and talk about how reason and objectivity are forms of white supremacy culture. There are the nerds who obsess over “embodiment” and “somatic therapy” and accuse everyone else of “living in their heads”. There are the nerds who deflect by becoming really into neurodiversity - “the interesting thing about my brain isn’t that I’m ‘smart’ or ‘rational’, it’s that I’m ADHDtistic, which is actually a weakness . . . but also secretly a strength!” There are the nerds who flirt with fascism because it idolizes men of action, and the nerds who convert to Christianity because it idolizes men of faith. There are the nerds who get really into Seeing Like A State, and how being into rationality and metrics and numbers is soooooo High Modernist, but as a Kegan Level Five Avatar they are far beyond such petty concerns. There are the nerds who redefine “nerd” as “person who likes Marvel movies” - having successfully gerrymandered themselves outside the category, they can go back to their impeccably-accurate statisticsblogging on educational outcomes, or their deep dives into anthropology and medieval mysticism, all while casting about them imprecations that of course nerds are loathsome scum who deserve to be bullied.
(maybe it’s unfair to attribute this to self-hatred per se. [...] )
kinda hard to have positive feelings about a passage in which the author claims people getting diagnosed with ADHD and autism are deflecting their self-hatred, especially not when equating it to...
kinda hard to have positive feelings about a passage in which the author claims people getting diagnosed with ADHD and autism are deflecting their self-hatred, especially not when equating it to things like converting to a religion. doesn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm about reading more of what they've written or give me a ton of hope about their writing being otherwise empathetic.
It's Scott Alexander which says basically everything about my feelings about both articles tbh. Scott Aaronson I know less well but since he keeps interacting with and defending Alexander then he...
It's Scott Alexander which says basically everything about my feelings about both articles tbh.
Scott Aaronson I know less well but since he keeps interacting with and defending Alexander then he gets to join him.
Also, not knowing that the common community developed term is AuDHD highlights the dismissiveness.
Oh I just noticed the person who left the original comments is the person who freaks out whenever anyone criticizes Scott Alexander. Makes sense, then.
Oh I just noticed the person who left the original comments is the person who freaks out whenever anyone criticizes Scott Alexander. Makes sense, then.
I don't think that's a fair observation. edit: more specifically, I don't think it's any more correct that saying "oh, this is one of the people who freak out any time a link to ACX is posted on...
I don't think that's a fair observation.
edit: more specifically, I don't think it's any more correct that saying "oh, this is one of the people who freak out any time a link to ACX is posted on tildes" on some of the other commenters.
I don't interpret it that way, I see it as a criticism of "2010s tumblr"-like focus on the diagnosis as the most important thing in one's personality, which doesn't seem healthy.
I don't interpret it that way, I see it as a criticism of "2010s tumblr"-like focus on the diagnosis as the most important thing in one's personality, which doesn't seem healthy.
You described it as "mildly offensive observations." I don't think it makes sense to be like "no not like that, it's mildly offensive in another direction" I pulled the Google trends on...
You described it as "mildly offensive observations." I don't think it makes sense to be like "no not like that, it's mildly offensive in another direction"
I pulled the Google trends on Adhdtism/adhdtistic vs audhd and the former two don't even have enough search results to register
That doesn't mean no one has used the term but it's a flag of how dismissive he is that as a mental health professional he doesn't know what terms are being used by people with the disorders.
But he mostly talks about psychology on his blog, not with his patients since he mostly does medication management. And tbh it shows.
Honestly that's valid. What I intended to say by that is that I acknowledge that it is clearly a jab and not neutral commentary, but I think it's a jab at attittude, not at a diagnosis or people...
You described it as "mildly offensive observations." I don't think it makes sense to be like "no not like that, it's mildly offensive in another direction"
Honestly that's valid. What I intended to say by that is that I acknowledge that it is clearly a jab and not neutral commentary, but I think it's a jab at attittude, not at a diagnosis or people with the diagnosis in general. And I think that things can be stated in a somewhat offensive way but still be mostly accurate.
Coming from a nerd who's got ADHD and is a mental health professional I think it's inaccurate and dismissive and he doesn't specialize in neurodivergence and it is very obvious. Things "can" be...
Coming from a nerd who's got ADHD and is a mental health professional I think it's inaccurate and dismissive and he doesn't specialize in neurodivergence and it is very obvious. Things "can" be offensive and accurate but I think this is just offensive.
Also the first post that came up of his when I went looking to confirm his work is mostly med management for treatment resistant depression is another genetics and IQ one from December. The man has a pattern.
I would generally agree that Scott Alexander's post is the one people should read. (Other than the clever title, Scott Aaronson isn't contributing much to the discussion -- it's basically just...
I would generally agree that Scott Alexander's post is the one people should read. (Other than the clever title, Scott Aaronson isn't contributing much to the discussion -- it's basically just blog spam.) But this particular excerpt makes me role my eyes. Alexander's complaint that "some percent of washed-up gifted kids compensate by really, really hating nerdiness, rationality, and the intellect" reads more like a whine than an observation, as if the only reason more people don't identify as rationalists is because of their own self-loathing (instead of, for example, being adverse to a movement that reduces the "super woke" to "self-hating nerds").
But otherwise there is some really fascinating stuff in that post, and I think Alexander's reasons for being interested in Scott Adams' life probably overlaps with at least some of our own reasons. Adams considered himself a reasonable person (who doesn't?), but he failed to understand why others saw the world differently from him. Rather than attempt to meet people in the middle, Adams dismissed their perspectives and assumed them intellectually inferior and victims of propaganda.
I think most of us here can relate to Adams' feelings to some extent, particularly in this time of political crisis. It's hard not to think that all Republicans are either propagandists or irrational when Trump calls Renee Good a "domestic terrorist" and Republicans double-down with the rhetoric. But identifying the breakdown is easy; moving forward is hard.
Adams' solution was to fully embrace the propaganda. He trained himself in the ways of hypnosis, writing quasi-religious treaties in which he would subconsciously "attempt to produce a feeling of euphoric enlightenment in the reader". Adams believed that, although reasoned discourse should guide policy, most people were not capable of reason and therefore should only receive the propaganda while their betters made the actual decisions. It is, to be sure, a perverse worldview, one that infantilizes anyone with a difference of opinion.
But if you categorically distrust those who disagree with you, then you probably also lack the self-awareness to realize when you're out of your depth. Adams' tragic irony was that he found himself drawn to conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific beliefs, going so far as to take ivermectin after his cancer diagnosis, despite the lack of medical evidence, which might well have accelerated his death. I consider his downfall, cancellation, and death a reminder to practice epistemic humility, that is, to acknowledge that while nobody ever intentionally believes something false, we are all certainly wrong about some things; and that if we automatically dismiss those we tend to disagree with, we risk locking ourselves out of the march towards truth.
I like that section too! It's a great reminder that the entire field of psychiatry is plagued with assholes that toy with other peoples' lives, for profit :) What a brave take; a doctor dismissing...
I like that section too! It's a great reminder that the entire field of psychiatry is plagued with assholes that toy with other peoples' lives, for profit :)
There are the nerds who deflect by becoming really into neurodiversity - “the interesting thing about my brain isn’t that I’m ‘smart’ or ‘rational’, it’s that I’m ADHDtistic, which is actually a weakness . . . but also secretly a strength!”
What a brave take; a doctor dismissing people with literal mental illnesses. Bravo. I can't wait to never read any of his other material.
Btw here's a piece by the NYT on the man, doxing him, to provide more context into the enviously large, genetically superior brain behind these works.
copying what I say above: I don't interpret it that way, I see it as a criticism of "2010s tumblr"-like focus on the diagnosis as the most important thing in one's personality, which doesn't seem...
What a brave take; a doctor dismissing people with literal mental illnesses. Bravo. I can't wait to never read any of his other material.
copying what I say above: I don't interpret it that way, I see it as a criticism of "2010s tumblr"-like focus on the diagnosis as the most important thing in one's personality, which doesn't seem healthy.
Btw here's a piece by the NYT on the man, doxing him, to provide more context into the enviously large, genetically superior brain behind these works.
Of all the reasons to hate him I think this is one of the worse ones and recommend looking up and reading the subject's response together with it, it gives reasonable explanations why some parts of the article are just badly written/wrong.
What a coincidence, I just finished reading The Dilbert Afterlife by Scott Alexander, which this article reacts to, and I want to recommend it, I think it's brilliant. It talks about the pitfalls...
What a coincidence, I just finished reading The Dilbert Afterlife by Scott Alexander, which this article reacts to, and I want to recommend it, I think it's brilliant. It talks about the pitfalls of being a clever but onesided nerd, about the cultural context of early 00s nerdom and how it developed, and also talks about ridiculous non-Dilbert books that Scott Adams wrote, among other things.
Scott Adams felt the contradictions of nerd-dom more acutely than most. As compensation, he was gifted with two great defense mechanisms. The first was humor (which Freud grouped among the mature, adaptive defenses), aided by its handmaiden self-awareness. The second (from Freud’s “neurotic” category) was his own particular variety of reaction formation, “I’m better than those other nerds because, while they foolishly worship rationality and the intellect, I’ve gotten past it to the real deal, marketing / manipulation / persuasion / hypnosis.”
When he was young, and his mind supple, he was able to balance both these mechanisms; the steam of their dissonance drove the turbine of his art. As he grew older, the first one - especially the self-awareness - started to fail, and he leaned increasingly heavily on the second. Forced to bear the entire weight of his wounded psyche, it started showing more and more cracks, until eventually he ended up as a podcaster - the surest sign of a deranged mind.
When I first heard the news that Scott Adams had succumbed to cancer, I posted something infinitely more trivial on my Facebook. I simply said:
Scott Adams (who reigned for decades as the #1 Scott A. of the Internet, with Alexander as #2 and me as at most #3) was a hateful asshole, a nihilist, and a crank. And yet, even when reading the obituaries that explain what an asshole, nihilist, and crank he was, I laugh whenever they quote him.
Inspired by Scott Alexander, I’d like now to try again, to say something more substantial. As Scott Alexander points out, Scott Adams’ most fundamental belief—the through-line that runs not only through Dilbert but through all his books and blog posts and podcasts—was that the world is ruled by idiots. The pointy-haired boss always wins, spouting about synergy and the true essence of leadership, and the nerdy Dilberts always lose. Trying to change minds by rational argument is a fools’ errand, as “master persuaders” and skilled hypnotists will forever run rings around you. He, Scott Adams, is cleverer than everyone else, among other things because he realizes all this—but even he is powerless to change it.
[...]
This seems like a good time to say something that’s been a subtext of Shtetl-Optimized for 20 years, but that Scott Alexander has inspired me to make text.
My whole worldview starts from the observation that science works. Not perfectly, of course—working in academic science for nearly 30 years, I’ve had a close-up view of the flaws—but the motor runs. On a planet full of pointy-haired bosses and imposters and frauds, science nevertheless took us in a few centuries from wretchedness and superstition to walking on the moon and knowing the age of the universe and the code of life.
[...]
Scott Adams was hardly the first great artist to have tragic moral flaws, or to cause millions of his fans to ask whether they could separate the artist from the art. But I think he provides one of the cleanest examples where the greatness and the flaws sprang from the same source: namely, overgeneralization from the correct observation that “the world is full of idiots,” in a way that leaves basically no room even for Darwin or Einstein, and so inevitably curdles over time into crankishness, bitterness, and arrogance. May we laugh at Scott Adams’ cartoons and may we learn from his errors, both of which are now permanent parts of the world’s heritage.
I also enjoyed it, more for how deep the rabbit hole went than the added commentary. Add it to the dictator book club list? I’m in a good mood a it came within days of quality Manic Monday and Bay...
Scott Alexander has put up one of his greatest posts ever
I also enjoyed it, more for how deep the rabbit hole went than the added commentary. Add it to the dictator book club list? I’m in a good mood a it came within days of quality Manic Monday and Bay Area House Party installments (celebratory deaths and good blog posts come in threes?).
Continuing off topic, the most intriguing thing from the Manic Monday post (on prediction markets) was:
Strange things happening on the COVID lab leak market, which has declined to 27%. This peaked at about 85% in 2023, declined a bit around the Rootclaim debate and my article on it, then stayed around 50-50 for a year or so. But for the past eight months, it’s been gradually trending downward, with no end in sight. Some of the change probably involves the discovery of a natural bat coronavirus with a furin cleavage site last October, but I’m surprised by the extent of the decline.
It seems like changes in prediction markets are an ambiguous clue. It tells you something happened but not what. You have to look elsewhere to find out the news.
It seems like changes in prediction markets are an ambiguous clue. It tells you something happened but not what. You have to look elsewhere to find out the news.
I posted recently in another thread about the entire through line of Dilbert really souring with me as I've grown and matured.
Namely that everyone in charge of everything is a moron, and if only the super smart engineers were in charge, we'd be living in a utopia.
When I was young and thought of myself as a super smart engineer, that worldview was pretty compelling. I'm sure a lot of Dilbert's hardcore audience falls into that category as well.
As I grew older, met different types of people, got exposed to different kinds of organizations and societies, and most importantly, kept an open mind, I learned that that wasn't quite right.
Firstly, I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was. I knew a lot about a few small areas of expertise, but there is so much more of the world than computer programming, or networking, or electronics. Many of those things are at least as useful and important to human well being as the "nerdy" disciplines that the people who love Dilbert are good at.
Secondly, I learned that there are many different types of intelligence. Being able to relate to people and empathize with them requires intelligence. Being persuasive and having the ability to rally many different types of people to one cause requires intelligence. Being able to juggle a lot of competing and antithical priorities so that everyone is at least somewhat happy requires intelligence.
Those aspects aren't inheritely more or less valuable than computer programming, but they are indisputably valuable.
Third, I learned over many painful and introspective experiences to humble myself. Even in my area of expertise, there are many people more talented and intelligent than I am, and there always will be. Even though I do have talent and intelligence, people with less experience and exposure to my field can and do provide suggestions I haven't thought about before, and it's worth at least giving them a cursory think.
There are many people who never learned these lessons, because they never wandered from their comfortable bubble, and spend all their time hanging out with other nerdy white guys around their same age. Or they have, but never did so with an open mind, and instead went through the world assured of their own superiority.
I'd rather deal with a team full of pointy haired bosses than a team full of those guys, because neither would get anything done, but the bosses would at least be able to hold a conversation about something other than video games.
I think the brand of Adams' intellectual nerdy "rational" elitism is an artifact of an earlier time that you'd don't see as much anymore. Unfortunately it seems to have been replaced by a flavor of what he became in his latter years; bigoted self assuredness based on absolutely nothing except the Bible and vibes.
On the other thread, I already thought your words were very wise, and I'm glad you expanded on that thought with examples from your own life, how your worldview matured.
The axiom, that "the world is full of idiots", isn't where the true error lies. It's the second half, that "I am smarter than the world full of idiots". If we accept the first, reject the second, we might safely arrive at "the world is full of idiots, and I am chief among them" -- we can all laugh together, I can laugh at myself, and I can still expect to learn a lot of fun and exciting things from the other idiots all the time. Best of all, I will come to discover what you did: that there are a lot of very genuinely very smart people wielding a lot of different kinds of intelligence. The idiots do come into some fortune and power: afterall, I'm not doing too shabby myself. But what a better world when it's also quite full of smart people who try very hard and make a lot of good happen.
Scott Adam's comics were fun when he leaned into the first half, making fun of PHB and also at Dilbert being a dummy. They got less fun when he started acting like the only smart person in the world.
I was gonna say, an awful lot of Dilbert was also poking fun at the engineers as well.
At least with the 90s Dilbert I was consuming as a teen, the closest I ever saw to full beating-down was on salespeople. And I have yet to meet an engineer that does not hate the average salesperson whom is abstracted from the consequences of their promises.
Several of my friends have made it up the management ladder now (in 40s) from gruntwork... one has gone from college dropout to 'just below VP' of a fairly prominent org. The difficulties of good management are real, but good managers convey this to their reports. But, there is always at least one PHB in any medium+ org and if the CEO is of equivalent standing it can result in many Dilbertesqe moments.
My one friend, the one highest in the management chain, was told by the CEO to deploy a whole AI learning interface in 40 days from 0. With a staff of like 4 and no clear requirements. His engineers were superheros that made it happen in the face of arbitray stupid demands. And one then got laid off 'because they had to tighten the belt'.
Another has done very much work as a contractor for the military, so understands why they'll spend $100k flying out the engineer who designed the system to come flip a breaker instead of reading the detailed technical manual that was written. But it doesn't bode well for appearances.
And the third has been thrown into a trial by fire. With one peer manager in particular that makes everyone else's lives a living hell my micromanaging and arbitrary punishments (like a staffer being reperimanded for 3 monitors instead of 2 on desk).
And the last is an engineer whom reported to the CEO of a small business. A CEO who drives a new BMW while claiming that a $40k bonus to the engineer who almost singlehandedly delivered on $5 mil in contracts is unreasonable. A CEO who refuses to let the company get larger tham 48 people so he doesn't have to give FMLA leave.
The 'quantity of Dilbert relates to toxicity' is certainly a relatable one, but it's hardly a function of immaturity and antisocial behavior at the bottom.
There are many different types of intelligence, almost as many as there are types of stupidity. The real maturity is knowing that we all posess far more of the latter than the former.
The biggest problem is that managers think their different intelligence and stress justifies earning multiples of their report's wages. For some reason those 20%+ annual bonuses stop trickling down, and become 3.6% raises at best. Seeing your boss make double you while continually ruining your life because they ignore your wisdom and it bites back every 6 months causes a lot of Dilbert comic proliferation.
The second biggest is leaders who trust a salesperson over the collective wisdom of the staff that would be installing, managing, and using said product.
Even the "salesperson" role has matured and professionalized in good organizations - we have "customer success managers" who have to sell, mitigate the complaints when the products they've sold don't perform as expected, and maintain long-term relationships with partner vendors.
That "aligns the incentives" much better than the old days where Sales could blame everyone else for failing to deliver. They actually have to get the technical teams to sign off on system design and programming before completing a sale, work out scheduling with a project manager and installing vendor, and enlist support and engineering on fixes and improvements.
I've worked with old-school "Dilbert" organizations and better managed companies. Aside from the way pay scales across the hierarchy (winner-take-all CEO salaries), there really are companies with fewer unmitigated PHBs, and generally more distributed accountability than in Scott Adams' Pacific Bell experience.
Yea tbh half of all of Scotts antisocial traits could be tied to "yea he worked at one of the most beuracratic souless orgs possible."
Yes.
In my experience, the difference between managers and engineers (technical staff) is that managers are able to use politics to game the system to their advantage. They can extract limited resources, money, or power from a company and often harm the company and the other employees in the process.
I've experienced many managers who blow into a company, amass some power and wealth, waste a bunch of money and time with ill-conceived projects, then leave to go do the same elsewhere. I don't see engineers do this.
This is true of society at large. The people who have the most success are usually politicians at some level, and they use political skills to manipulate systems to enrich themselves at the expense of others. The technical people are more interested in "the work", whatever that is, because it's interesting for them to solve puzzles and fix things.
I'm not saying that managers are generally evil or something. It's just that they are more likely to have skills that result in a tragedy of the commons.
Good managers aren't gaming the system to personal advantage, they're bridges between technical necessities and business goals; umbrellas who shield their teams from the upper level bullshit that rains down in ignorance of ground reality; bulldozers clearing obstacles for their subordinates to get work done; and ladders that foster career growth for their teammates.
I've had some great role models in this regard, including people who rose through the technical ranks and broadened their skills to be able to function in all those different capacities. I'm not a manager anymore because it's incredibly stressful and demanding to flex constantly like that. Solving puzzles and fixing things is practically retirement for me.
That's not to say I've never met the toxic sociopaths and Dunning-Kruger School of Management graduates. They're blessedly much rarer than the good managers, but they're damaging enough to merit the negativity bias.
When you encounter actions that don't make sense to you, there are two common reactions: "I must be missing something" or "that person is an idiot". We all do both, but the more skewed your ratio is towards number 2, the less you're going to learn about the world in the course of your life. I think most of us learn and work on this as we age. Most of us.
When I was a kid there was some sort of local political scandal where someone wasted a ton of money on something useless. I couldn't believe what a moron that guy was. Even as a child. How could he really think that was a good use of the town's money.
Of course it all came out later that it was a scam. The guy was getting kickbacks from a friend's business or something. He wasn't an idiot that didn't understand the value of money. He was just stealing it.
Thankfully, we have updated buildings standards to help us differentiate between those things in houses.
I'm half convinced that everybody who built houses in the mid sixties was either drunk or high.
Thank you for that. I think you're right. Maybe a better way to put it instead of "we're all smart in our own way" would be "we're all idiots in our own way".
I can personally attest with 100% certainly that the latter is true.
Edit: I just thought of a story I was telling my dad the other day about me trying to build a wooden box that illustrates this well. I had to build a small wooden box for some electronics I wanted to put outside. Easy. Six sides, rabbet joints on the table saw, glue, join, and clamp.
It ended up taking me all day.
I could NOT get this thing to line up. I measured. I put one side on top of the rabbet, that didn't work, I had the rabbet join a different way. Nope, still had a gap on one side, or it was too big. I swear to god I spent three hours on the floor of my garage trying to put this six pieced thing together like a five year old playing with his first lego set.
It was a huge blow to my ego, because as I mentioned earlier, I like to think of myself as a smart guy. I was sitting on the floor in my mid 30s, unable to assemble a box, and I felt like the stupidest motherfucker in the entire world.
If someone with any sort of experience with woodworking, or really anyone with basic spatial intelligence saw my attempts, they'd probably think I had a legitimate mental deficiency and feel bad for me. Maybe I actually do have a legitimate mental deficiency in that arena.
It's those kinds of experiences that I think certain types of people (one of whom name may vaguely rhyme with... sealion tusk) should really introspect on and hammer home the point that no one is good at everything. We're all absolute mouth breathing morons sometimes.
Every specialized expert seeking to step out of their comfort zone ought to spend some time on shoshin, or "beginner's mind".
It's natural to feel like an idiot when you're doing something you've never done before. It's easy to forget that you became a genius at X mainly because you practiced it constantly from an early age, rather than through some mystic innate talent. We've all been steeped in the mythos of Spearman's g, so we assume mastering new things should be as seemingly simple and painless as whatever our unique genius was.
If we all had the patience and compassion to stop treating ourselves and others as "idiots", maybe people would be more open and willing to get out of their cognitive ruts and expand their capabilities.
Hardware space is the worst, I always say. Whenever I'm building anything, even a mere four sided tiny fence around a 1m² flower bed, it's all wobbly and not straight and just generally terrible. When my kid was learning to cut shapes with a craft knife, it's all kinds of annoying as well because things just don't slide like they do on a tablet swiping up. For your box, do you have one of those three way corner clamp things that keep stuff orthogonal in xyz? It was a game changer for me
Nah. Just an absurd amount of c clamps. I eventually figured it out, but it took an absurd about of trial and error, and I think I eventually just recut everything.
I learned that there are dozens of ways for double rabbet joints to sit on a box, and if you don't plan out exactly how yours will sit, and write them down, you're almost guaranteed to have something that doesn't fit. If I ever have to do it again, single rabbets only. Or if I'm in the mood to feel like a complete idiot on an even higher scale again, maybe I'll try dovetails.
You're a much more ambitious crafter than I :D but yes, woodworking is a dedicated kind of wizardry and intelligence for sure.
I had a similar journey to you and have similarly reached a point where I value thoughtful inquisitiveness and humility over pride and intelligence in myself and my coworkers.
I agree about the shift. I think one of the factors that has changed a lot from the 90's to now is that nerdity has really moved from the margins of culture to the mainstream. Things like star wars, star trek (maybe less so), science fiction and fantasy, even comics. The counterculture / outsider vibe was a big part of being a nerd in the 90s.
In the 90s, programmers saw themselves as hackers, another countercultural posture. I have this quote in my database:
Now, programming has become "software engineering," and the whole discipline has moved toward professionalism. Most programmers do work a normal office day.
But, as you observe, that outsider / persecution complex /counterculture element migrated to other places, like the incel/toxic masculinity community. The religious right has adopted the persecution complex even though (imo) they are doing most of the persecuting these days.
Yeah. I grew up in those counter culture days, and I miss that feeling. I used to idolize hackers in movies and news stories. Kevin Mitnick was a hero to me who was sticking it to the man and forcing the system to confront it's own hypocrisy. I thought that the proliferation of information technology would usher in a new golden age free from ignorance. "Information wants to be free" and all that.
Looking back, it was naive from the outset, yes, but also, there was some innocence lost when everyone involved saw that information technology ended up just being one out of many tools that could be used to liberate people, or to oppress people, or to control people, or to profit off of people, just like any human invention before it. It wasn't inheritely good, and it didn't want anything.
I think many of us sort of realized that maybe our parents and teachers were on to something when they said that the world is complicated, and few things are truly so black and white. Many didn't, and it seems like most of those people have doubled down to the two places where large swathes of people do believe that the world is simple, black and white, with clear good and evil; religion and reactionary politics.
A lot of people have a hard time with how left/libertarian leaning tech nerds who were militantly atheist morphed into the conservative Christian Thielites we have today. When viewed through that lens, it makes perfect sense.
There needed to be good guys and bad guys. The bad guys were the old out of touch rich people who controlled the world. Once the nerds got old enough and rich enough to be the people who controlled the world, a new answer had to emerge for why the world sucked still.
(it's the rich people)
....only like 1/4 kidding.
They always have, always will. Especially stateside where an awful lot of the country was forged in puritanical values.
It’s kind of amazing how one’s perspective narrows and broadens over time. Personally, I was really negative about the newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans produced under RFK Jr. recently. Between the return of the food pyramid, the contradictory advice on saturated fats, and that absolutely stupid “ending the war on protein” line, it just seemed crazy. Then I came across a PBS show with a panel talking about it and they pointed out that in spite of those obvious deficiencies it was the most progressive DGA released to date, even acknowledging the problems with ultra processed food. Yes, it was obviously still tainted with the beef and dairy industry and their propaganda, but every version of the guidelines has been also.
It just goes to show that even people you disagree with with are still doing their best to make a better world. As much as I am in the “punch fascists” team, we’ll never truly be rid of them and we should probably still try to understand them (which very clearly doesn’t include trusting them with power).
Yeah. I have a soft side for RFK Jr. in general compared to the rest of the administration. Yes, he's overconfident in his knowledge and abilities. Yes, he probably has some severe undiagnosed mental issues. Yes, he is, and will continue to be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of kids because of irresponsible rhetoric about vaccines.
All that said, he's the only prominent member of the Trump administration that doesn't seem to be intentionally destroying the country. I believe that he's legitimately trying to help people in his own unhinged totally unqualified way, and MAGA was the bitter pill he had to swallow to do that in his mind. I don't get the same level of pure hatred from him, even towards his critics that I do from the rest of the Trump administration, and I think if he got out of his own ass and were more open to listening to actual scientists and taking their advice instead of stuff he saw on YouTube and shady websites, he could actually be a somewhat effective HHS director. Maybe I'm just not paying attention enough though.
Yes, I haven't kept close tabs on him because it's all so depressing, but he does seem to relent under pressure from actual experts. At first he wasn't going to go ahead with a new flu vaccine for this winter, but I got mine a couple of months ago.
I just want to point out that this, and its consequences, is exactly what the article that this linked article is responding to is all about. It goes deeper, shows examples of his opinions from non-Dilbert sources, his personal development, and also has some funny or accurate jabs at him or at nerds as a whole (the author also being one and, like all of us, having to go through the conflict of realizing early on that we're not as capable as we thought as teenagers).
I enjoy mildly offensive observations, so I liked this passage in particular, but the rest of the article is otherwise quite kind and empathetic:
kinda hard to have positive feelings about a passage in which the author claims people getting diagnosed with ADHD and autism are deflecting their self-hatred, especially not when equating it to things like converting to a religion. doesn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm about reading more of what they've written or give me a ton of hope about their writing being otherwise empathetic.
It's Scott Alexander which says basically everything about my feelings about both articles tbh.
Scott Aaronson I know less well but since he keeps interacting with and defending Alexander then he gets to join him.
Also, not knowing that the common community developed term is AuDHD highlights the dismissiveness.
Oh I just noticed the person who left the original comments is the person who freaks out whenever anyone criticizes Scott Alexander. Makes sense, then.
I don't think that's a fair observation.
edit: more specifically, I don't think it's any more correct that saying "oh, this is one of the people who freak out any time a link to ACX is posted on tildes" on some of the other commenters.
I don't interpret it that way, I see it as a criticism of "2010s tumblr"-like focus on the diagnosis as the most important thing in one's personality, which doesn't seem healthy.
You described it as "mildly offensive observations." I don't think it makes sense to be like "no not like that, it's mildly offensive in another direction"
I pulled the Google trends on Adhdtism/adhdtistic vs audhd and the former two don't even have enough search results to register
That doesn't mean no one has used the term but it's a flag of how dismissive he is that as a mental health professional he doesn't know what terms are being used by people with the disorders.
But he mostly talks about psychology on his blog, not with his patients since he mostly does medication management. And tbh it shows.
Honestly that's valid. What I intended to say by that is that I acknowledge that it is clearly a jab and not neutral commentary, but I think it's a jab at attittude, not at a diagnosis or people with the diagnosis in general. And I think that things can be stated in a somewhat offensive way but still be mostly accurate.
Coming from a nerd who's got ADHD and is a mental health professional I think it's inaccurate and dismissive and he doesn't specialize in neurodivergence and it is very obvious. Things "can" be offensive and accurate but I think this is just offensive.
Also the first post that came up of his when I went looking to confirm his work is mostly med management for treatment resistant depression is another genetics and IQ one from December. The man has a pattern.
I would generally agree that Scott Alexander's post is the one people should read. (Other than the clever title, Scott Aaronson isn't contributing much to the discussion -- it's basically just blog spam.) But this particular excerpt makes me role my eyes. Alexander's complaint that "some percent of washed-up gifted kids compensate by really, really hating nerdiness, rationality, and the intellect" reads more like a whine than an observation, as if the only reason more people don't identify as rationalists is because of their own self-loathing (instead of, for example, being adverse to a movement that reduces the "super woke" to "self-hating nerds").
But otherwise there is some really fascinating stuff in that post, and I think Alexander's reasons for being interested in Scott Adams' life probably overlaps with at least some of our own reasons. Adams considered himself a reasonable person (who doesn't?), but he failed to understand why others saw the world differently from him. Rather than attempt to meet people in the middle, Adams dismissed their perspectives and assumed them intellectually inferior and victims of propaganda.
I think most of us here can relate to Adams' feelings to some extent, particularly in this time of political crisis. It's hard not to think that all Republicans are either propagandists or irrational when Trump calls Renee Good a "domestic terrorist" and Republicans double-down with the rhetoric. But identifying the breakdown is easy; moving forward is hard.
Adams' solution was to fully embrace the propaganda. He trained himself in the ways of hypnosis, writing quasi-religious treaties in which he would subconsciously "attempt to produce a feeling of euphoric enlightenment in the reader". Adams believed that, although reasoned discourse should guide policy, most people were not capable of reason and therefore should only receive the propaganda while their betters made the actual decisions. It is, to be sure, a perverse worldview, one that infantilizes anyone with a difference of opinion.
But if you categorically distrust those who disagree with you, then you probably also lack the self-awareness to realize when you're out of your depth. Adams' tragic irony was that he found himself drawn to conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific beliefs, going so far as to take ivermectin after his cancer diagnosis, despite the lack of medical evidence, which might well have accelerated his death. I consider his downfall, cancellation, and death a reminder to practice epistemic humility, that is, to acknowledge that while nobody ever intentionally believes something false, we are all certainly wrong about some things; and that if we automatically dismiss those we tend to disagree with, we risk locking ourselves out of the march towards truth.
I like that section too! It's a great reminder that the entire field of psychiatry is plagued with assholes that toy with other peoples' lives, for profit :)
What a brave take; a doctor dismissing people with literal mental illnesses. Bravo. I can't wait to never read any of his other material.
Btw here's a piece by the NYT on the man, doxing him, to provide more context into the enviously large, genetically superior brain behind these works.
copying what I say above: I don't interpret it that way, I see it as a criticism of "2010s tumblr"-like focus on the diagnosis as the most important thing in one's personality, which doesn't seem healthy.
Of all the reasons to hate him I think this is one of the worse ones and recommend looking up and reading the subject's response together with it, it gives reasonable explanations why some parts of the article are just badly written/wrong.
What a coincidence, I just finished reading The Dilbert Afterlife by Scott Alexander, which this article reacts to, and I want to recommend it, I think it's brilliant. It talks about the pitfalls of being a clever but onesided nerd, about the cultural context of early 00s nerdom and how it developed, and also talks about ridiculous non-Dilbert books that Scott Adams wrote, among other things.
From the blog post:
[...]
[...]
I also enjoyed it, more for how deep the rabbit hole went than the added commentary. Add it to the dictator book club list? I’m in a good mood a it came within days of quality Manic Monday and Bay Area House Party installments (celebratory deaths and good blog posts come in threes?).
Continuing off topic, the most intriguing thing from the Manic Monday post (on prediction markets) was:
It seems like changes in prediction markets are an ambiguous clue. It tells you something happened but not what. You have to look elsewhere to find out the news.