Comment by mrweasel

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.

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.)

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.

> 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.

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-ad...

> 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.

> 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.

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

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

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".

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

>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.

> 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

>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.

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.

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.

> “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?

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

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.

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.

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.

It's somewhat ironic to claim someone (who spoke every day for an hour about his thoughts) went "off the rails" on the same exact day an attorney representing the country's most prestigious civil-rights organization argued gender discrimination to the Supreme Court and yet was unable to provide a way to distinguish men from women.

You say the end of his life was sad, meanwhile he wrote of an "amazing life" in his final note and expressed immense joy in positively impacting thousands of people.

It's so strange how people like you classify other people's experiences that you actually know nothing about.

https://x.com/EithanHaim/status/2011221178535338244

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> 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.