Dilbert creator Scott Adams says he will die soon from same cancer as Joe Biden

https://www.thewrap.com/dilbert-scott-adams-prostate-cancer-biden/

by dale_huevo • 1 year ago

452 469 1 year ago

thewrap.com

toomuchtodo2• 1 year ago

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1924477866915315722

toomuchtodo2• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams

ravenstine• 1 year ago

That would explain his rather obvious lack of energy these days.

Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years. Regardless of what you think of him, as someone who has worked in Corporate America for over a decade, there really isn't anything quite like Dilbert to describe the sort of white collar insanity I've had to learn to take in stride. My first workplace as a junior developer was straight out of Dilbert and Office Space. I have a gigantic collection of digitized Dilbert strips that best describe office situations I've run into in real life – many of them including the pointy haired boss.

He's expressed a lot of what I would consider... stupid opinions these days, but I would be sad to learn he's no longer with us.

mdp2021• 1 year ago

collection of digitized Dilbert strips that best describe office situations I've run into in real life

Probably also because, like e.g. "Yes (Prime) Minister", part of the depicted did come from anecdotes, instead of fantasy.

jpmattia• 1 year ago

part of the depicted did come from anecdotes

He spoke at MIT (early 90s?) and I remember him talking about making fun of PacBell colleagues in his comic: They would recognize themselves, ask him to autograph the comic for them, and then go away happy (thus making fun of them a second time.)

jimt12343• 1 year ago

100% agree ^^^ He went full Elon Musk, before Elon Musk. But yeah, back in the 90s/2000s, when my career in Corporate America started to settle in, his Dilbert comics brought my loads of comic relief. My favorite character was Wally; he always seemed to "fail up". I recall Wally meeting with the pointy-haired boss to tell him he'd returned from his 3-week vacation. The boss said, "You were out on a 3-week vacation?" Wally, the master, replied, "Sorry, I misspoke. I'm leaving now for my 3-week vacation." LOL

FireBeyond3• 1 year ago

Two of my favorites:

Catbert on work life balance: "Give us some balance, you selfish hag" https://steemitimages.com/p/7258xSVeJbKnFEnBwjKLhL15SoynbgJK...

The other, I can never seem to find. They're all in a meeting, and the Pointy Haired Boss says, "This next task is critical yet thankless and urgent, and will go to whoever next makes eye contact with me". Everyone stares at the desk, and then Alice pulls out a hand mirror and angles it between the PHB and Wally.

dctoedt• 1 year ago

Since we're posting favorites, here's one about lawyers, which I show to my contract-drafting students every semester:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230301101359/https://dilbert.c...

fidotron2• 1 year ago

Wally not washing towels because when he uses them he's the cleanest thing in the house, so logically they should get cleaner every time . . .

fallingknife• 1 year ago

"Wally, you're in charge of supporting the legacy system. How long will it take to add this feature?"

"Remind me, when are we planning to finish switching over to the new system, again?"

"six months"

"I estimate that it will take 8 months to deliver your feature"

jokethrowaway• 1 year ago

It's not controversial to believe one lying politician over the other. Approximately 50% of your country does that. If you squint you'll see that both parties are an expression of the same statist ideology and there's very little difference between them. Now anarchists are a different breed but they're a ridiculed minority.

Just because the tech scene became this lefty hell circle, we should not consider controversial a thought that is so widespread in today's culture that it puts a president in the oval office twice.

sorcerer-mar• 1 year ago

If you squint you'll see that both parties are an expression of the same statist ideology and there's very little difference between them.

If you squint so hard your eyes are closed, maybe

ActorNightly6• 1 year ago

Even if what you were saying is true (and its most certainly not), its funny how everyone who makes this argument always tends to fall on the conservative side, that in fact does significantly more lying as a verifiable statistic.

pixelatedindex• 1 year ago

Just because the tech scene became this lefty hell circle

Nah there’s plenty of Trumpers in tech. Go on Blind, you’ll see.

freejazz3• 1 year ago

I have to squint to read your post because it is so greyed-out

jakevoytko• 1 year ago

It was a little sad to watch him get radicalized in real time. I really enjoyed reading his blog before this started to happen. But then a few publications started quoting blog posts of his out of context as rage bait -- I remember he was particularly butthurt about some Jezebel posts that took things he said out of context.

At this point, he basically started leaning into controversy for pageviews. He'd start linking to the controversial section of each post right at the top of the post. After a few months or so I had to unsubscribe, after years of reading his blog and Dilbert cartoons/books.

He's become such a gremlin that I won't be 100% sure he's serious about this until he actually dies.

prepend• 1 year ago

I liked his blog at first and thought it really declined with video and short form content. It’s like his written editing slowed him down and made him less clickbaity than when he could post a video with no editing in just minutes.

rhines• 1 year ago

Yeah I remember binging his blog while between classes in university - he wrote well and had interesting thoughts on marketability, mastery, business, etc., all things that I was interested in as someone learning to be an adult and find his place in the world. Then Trump ran for president, and honestly the blog was still good - Adams had some genuinely good insights about why Trump appealed, and suggested that he might be using the Republicans to get into power but he really doesn't share their values and will shake things up for the better. But then somehow Adams' identity got wrapped up in the idea of Trump not being as bad as people think and he just supported Trump more and more even when it became clear that Trump did not have a master plan to liberalize the Republican party.

libraryatnight• 1 year ago

I grew up dreaming of being a cartoonist, and while Gary Larson, Berkely Breathed, and Bill Watterson were my holy trinity Dilbert wasn't far off. Always admired Adams and his humor - and like you even more so once I ended up in the corporate computer world.

Was sad to me to see someone so good at lampooning absurdity get sucked into such a toxic mindset, but I'll also be sad to hear he's gone and I'm sad to hear he's up against it.

ActorNightly6• 1 year ago

Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years.

He has had some questionable views all throughout his life. In his book "The Dilbert Future", which was from 1997, the last 2 chapters are some wacky stuff about manifesting - i.e if you write something down 100 times a day every day it will come true and other stuff like that.

And while that may seem a far cry from the alt-right stuff he eschews, its really not - inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking.

orionsbelt• 1 year ago

Manifesting is not that wacky.

Of course, you are not going to write down that you will win the lottery and then win.

But most people are their own worst enemy and self limiting to some extent. Focusing on what you want in life, and affirming it to yourself over and over, is effectively a way to brain wash yourself to change your own self limiting behavior and it’s not surprising that this is often successful.

concordDance2• 1 year ago

inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking.

Can we not do this kind of thing please?

freejazz3• 1 year ago

Lol, Garry Shandling "manifested" if you deeply care enough about something to actually spend the time to write it out 100 times in a day, you might also take some other actions...

alabastervlog• 1 year ago

And while that may seem a far cry from the alt-right stuff he eschews

The podcast If Books Could Kill manages to stumble on a fair amount of overlap between "power of positive thinking" / "The Secret" crap, and right wing politics in the books they review.

hennell• 1 year ago

I think the thing with "manifesting" is it's almost impossible to write something down a 100 times a day, everyday without also doing other things about the goal, as it's on your mind so much. Obviously if you write "I'm going to become an olympic athlete" but just sit on a chair nothing will happen. But if you're writing that daily you're going to end up doing more exercise because you're thinking about it. You might spot opportunities that you would otherwise miss because your brain stops skimming over it because it's such a repetitive pathway now.

And while that obviously has limits, and is far from the magical technique some might claim - it's very hard to argue against things that work.

nradov2• 1 year ago

That is misinformation. There is nothing in traditional conservative thinking which depends on inability to process information clearly or think in reality. Those mental deficits can be found across the political spectrum. We might not agree with conservative value systems but let's at least be intellectually honest in our criticisms instead of using strawman arguments.

throwaway5752• 1 year ago

"eschews" means "To avoid, shun" (https://www.oed.com/dictionary/eschew_v1?tab=meaning_and_use...)

BeFlatXIII• 1 year ago

inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking.

It is absolutely not a unique failure to conservatives. But it does explain why there is so much interchange between crunchy granola hippies and qanon militias.

kubb• 1 year ago

The claim that conservatism is rooted in an inability to process reality is a misrepresentation.

The actual cornerstone of conservatism is an instinctual preference for stability, order, and the familiar. The danger arises when this instinct is hijacked by a rigid ideology that resists truth and seeks control rather than continuity.

Which is, you know, what the American right is doing.

neilv• 1 year ago

you write something down 100 times a day every day it will come true

If you are writing "Repetitive Strain Injury".

intalentive• 1 year ago

I think you meant “espouses” not “eschews”.

mlinhares• 1 year ago

get-rich-quick schemes have been the bread and butter of the self-help/manosphere/conservative environment for quite a while. Its not a mistake that most "famous" people in these circles are either selling courses to make you "rich" or supplements to make you "strong".

and with a population desperate for any improvement in life these things end up finding a place, just like all the betting platforms all over the place. the only reason to bet is if you think you'll win.

fox4587• 1 year ago

inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking.

Ye be needing a mirror, lad. A mirror to help ye pull out the log in yer eye.

vintermann• 1 year ago

I always had trouble knowing what he actually believed and what he just said for fun/attention/as some sort of experiment in what he could get away with saying.

But I do think that the wild admiration of manipulative people was genuine.

mcv2• 1 year ago

As weird as he is, his claim that Trump uses a form of mass hypnosis is still the best explanation for Trump's success that I've heard. But why then Adams would support Trump, who is clearly the ultimate PHB, is something I never understood.

abirch2• 1 year ago

If you've ever read Thinking Fast and Slow, Trump is great at appealing to System 1. He's spent his entire lifetime focusing on his branding and what people think of him. I dislike almost all of Trump's policies and his tactics; however, he's great at oversimplifying things and getting the visceral reactions he wants.

Chapelle's SNL monolog about Trump is pretty spot on too.

JCattheATM5• 1 year ago

Don't underestimate the extent to which sexism and racism factored in to his victory also. The level of competence, integrity and patriotism between the two candidates was staggering, and yet...

legitster• 1 year ago

Dilbert also failed to keep up with the times. Despite publishing strips about AI or remote work or etc, you can still tell that he has spent so long away from that world that he no longer has any novel insight into it. All of the jokes come secondhand from anecdotes that he hears or reads about.

paulddraper2• 1 year ago

That's true.

Dilbert is about the 90s.

dhosek• 1 year ago

Sometime in the late 90s Dilbert pretty much became Pluggers but without the attribution to the readers sending in their ideas.

rightbyte2• 1 year ago

I think Dilbert's cubicle nightmare frozen in time is somewhat charming.

tim3338• 1 year ago

Some of the recent stuff is ok. For example https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

aredox5• 1 year ago

And Adams failed to keep with himself with his fawning over who could be described as the pointy-headed-boss in chief.

Seriously, making your whole career deriding stupid, clueless, cruel top managers and then lionizing Trump... I guess there isn't a single mirror in his house.

ghaff2• 1 year ago

It's almost certainly hard to maintain the energy/inspiration needed for a daily comic strip/comic. I also think Scott Adams had trouble moving beyond the 1990s Pac Bell environment after he was no longer part of corporate (much less startup) life.

WalterBright7• 1 year ago

He's also the earliest person to predict a Trump win in 2015, and was ridiculed for it, but turned out to be right.

Kye• 1 year ago

Democrats snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is a vintage meme at this point. He may have been the most famous person to say what so many of us expected first, but it just means he paid attention.

stevenwoo• 1 year ago

One of Bernie Sanders campaign slogans in his first primary campaigns which started in 2015 was “Bernie Beats Trump” - the lack of enthusiasm around Hillary Clinton was palpable.

ChrisMarshallNY• 1 year ago

I was a Dilbert fanatic for a long time.

Adams, himself? Not so much. I think he tends to have a rather nasty outlook on humanity, and I had a hard time reconciling it.

I do know that he was/is pretty much about as far away from Diamond Joe* as you can get. Interesting that they seem to be fighting the same battle.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_(The_Onion)

ryandrake• 1 year ago

My one "boomer" take: Something I wish the younger generation would learn is that it's useful to be able to separate a work from its author. Some of my favorite films were produced by Harvey Weinstein. They're still my favorite films. The fact that a slimeball was a force behind making them doesn't detract from their content. I like Robert Heinlein sci-fi, even though, judged by today's moral yardstick, some of his views were... questionable. I still like Harry Potter even though J. K. Rowling went totally bananas. Troubled and/or terrible people can make great art and music, and it's OK to like the art and question the artist.

lmm• 1 year ago

there really isn't anything quite like Dilbert to describe the sort of white collar insanity I've had to learn to take in stride.

OneFTE was brilliant, and the creator explicitly talked about what he was doing differently from Dilbert - that you could mock the absurdities while still acknowledging the positives of the corporate life. And then he took the whole thing down :(.

throaway2501• 1 year ago

Dilbert was as much an era as he was an icon. Good luck in the great cube farm in the sky, Scott.

paulpauper• 1 year ago

damn . I wonder if it's possible for the cancer to spread fast enough that tests would not have helped, so from elevated PSA to metastatic cancer in the span of months, or a year? This could have been the case with Biden and Adams.

unsnap_biceps• 1 year ago

My understanding is that it's generally slow spreading, but it's also slow to show symptoms, so they could have had it for years without anything indicating that they're in trouble.

canucker2016• 1 year ago

there's two types of prostate cancer - slow, so slow that you'll probably die of something else and fast. you don't want fast. even the chemical castration that they use won't stop the fast-type of prostate cancer if they don't catch it early enough.

ainiriand2• 1 year ago

Check your prostate yearly past 45-50. Through check with ultrasound.

chasil• 1 year ago

My physician stopped recommending any testing when I turned 50.

I still ask for the PSA test. I've never been offered ultrasound.

tim3338• 1 year ago

The PSA test is pretty bad, not much better than 50/50 accuracy. I had raised PSA myself but it seems a false alarm. I bought some shares in a company with a 94% accurate test but it doesn't seem to have take off as a business thing.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 year ago

Bummer. Despite his recent controversy I have enjoyed his humor for decades and will continue to remember him for this.

CSMastermind• 1 year ago

Pointy-haired boss: "According to the anonymous online employee survey, you don't trust management. What's up with that?"

---

Godspeed Scott. Thank you for all the laughs.

al_borland2• 1 year ago

I actually had this happen back in high school. The teacher gave us “anonymous” surveys to gauge her performance. She analyzed the handwriting to determine which one was mine. I actively tried to change my handwriting as well, but I guess not well enough. I’ve never trusted a survey was actually anonymous after that.

JohnFen2• 1 year ago

Yes, 100% this. I learned a similar lesson and will never risk trusting that any survey is anonymous again.

I've seen the pattern repeat with other data collection as well -- "anonymous" data collection or "anonymized" data almost never is.

yegle• 1 year ago

A simple trick is to write with your non-dominant hand :-)

atonse• 1 year ago

We've been tasked by a client for 2 years to create an anonymized survey, and my mind has gone to great lengths to devise a survey where even our own employees (or superusers with full DB access) cannot figure out who a respondent is.

It's been a fun exercise in software architecture. Because I actually care about this.

But we keep pushing this annual survey another year since we never seem to be ready to actually implement it (due to other priorities)

dpc_01234• 1 year ago

Great teacher gave you an invaluable life lesson.

protocolture• 1 year ago

When I was in grade 2 we had a secret santa, but it was the competitive variant, where the "winners" were able to guess who gave them the gift.

So on the card I provided with my gift, I signed off the name of someone else in class, and partially erased it. Made sure it was still somewhat legible and then wrote "From your secret santa" beneath it.

They didn't believe the gift was from me even after the teacher provided them with the original draw, and their supposed gift giver identified someone else as their recipient.

ashdksnndck• 1 year ago

When I quit a unicorn tech startup several years ago, they sent me an anonymous exit survey. It was was on a name-brand survey platform and the platform’s UI indicated the survey was anonymous. In my later in-person exit interview with a guy from HR, he had us go over a copy of my answers! Based on his demeanor, I don’t think he knew it was presented as anonymous.

spacechild1• 1 year ago

The same thing happened to a friend of mind in junior highschool. The teacher even called him out in front of the whole class for giving her bad ratings. We all did, but she recognized his handwriting in particular:-D

bemmu• 1 year ago

I personally knew someone who gave a course, and handed out anonymous feedback forms. All subtly unique.

madcaptenor• 1 year ago

In college once I took a course that was being offered for the first time. They gave a midterm survey (usually we only had final surveys). I filled it out honestly, saying that my partner for our group projects was not pulling his weight. I had forgotten that I was in the only group of two (all the other groups were of three). The professor actually pulled me aside to let me know that he was aware our group wasn't working out - unfortunately there wasn't anything he could do.

ornornor2• 1 year ago

I worked at a startup (that is still a startup going nowhere 12 years later) where the ceo and cto made a big show of the town hall and in particular the “open questions” part. Anyone could go on a little internal app, ask an “anonymous” question, and they’d answer all of this week’s questions each week.

In reality, they cherry picked the questions that they wanted to talk about and ignored the hard ones. We could tell because all asked questions were publicly visible in the app. But not all answered “ah we’re out of time”

So I once posted a question about why were the interns unpaid while writing code we shipped in production. I posted this question just after the previous town hall so that it would stay visible in the app for the longest time until the next town hall and would also be top of the list of pending questions.

For a couple weeks they said they wanted to answer it but needed to ask clarification questions to make sure they understood correctly, so could please the asker reveal themselves as it’s only fair. I never said it was me and nobody said it was them either. They couldn’t just delete the question like they usually did with unanswered questions before as this had stirred quite a little storm between employees. And it would clash with the “we’re open and fair” koolaid they were serving us.

Eventually, they deleted the question without annswering it “since the asker doesn’t have the courage to reveal themselves” and I was laid off which was “totally unrelated to the question you asked”.

Before leaving I dumped the database for that app out of curiosity. You bet that every single question also had an entry of who asked which question. They knew all along.

teddyh17• 1 year ago

Link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/2010-09-01>

bsimpson• 1 year ago

I try to be careful about e.g. changing punctuation and spacing if I want anonymous feedback to stay anonymous.

After some shuffling at work, I ended up spending some time under an awful manager. She approached me after an anonymous round of feedback and said "I noticed you wrote _____." I had, in fact, not written that.

On some level, having her guess wrong seemed even worse, but it also felt nice to be able to honestly say "I did not." Hopefully taught her to respect anonymity next time.

wombatpm2• 1 year ago

I routinely steal quotes from coworkers in meetings and use them in my surveys I never express my sentiments, just the sentiments of others.

rcarmo• 1 year ago

My absolute fave is somewhere along the lines of “I hope to someday solve a problem that isn’t caused by leadership”.

jonstewart3• 1 year ago

My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer in late 2018. A few years before that, the medical community had switched away from PSA screening, as it was thought more harm than good was being done from early stage intervention.

My dad's still ok. He had some localized radiation to beat back the biggest tumors on his spine, then did a round of chemo. This past summer he did a fun immunotherapy treatment, not CAR-T... but something more like that than checkpoint inhibitors. Otherwise his tumors have been kept to almost nothing due to hormone therapy.

Unfortunately, what eventually happens is you accumulate enough hormone therapty resistant cancer cells that the tumors start growing again in a meaningful way, and then there's not much that can be done. I assume this is the stage that Scott Adams has had and that he's been battling it for many years by now. With President Biden, it seems likely that his prostate cancer will respond to treatment, and if this is the case then he will likely die of something else, as is usual now for old men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer.

JKCalhoun• 1 year ago

“I’d like to extend my respect and compassion and sympathy for the ex president and his family, because they’re going to be going through an especially tough time,” Adams added.

That in and of itself puts him above what I've come to expect from this low-bar dip in American culture. Good for him.

defterGoose• 1 year ago

Sure, but one wishes that it didn't need to arrive on the back of a face-to-face encounter with his own mortality. That understanding of a shared humanity is accessible in other ways, though cancer diagnoses do have a way of shoving it in your face.

slg3• 1 year ago

We have seen this pattern repeated with numerous people who share Adams' political opinions, in that this level of empathy only seems to arrive once they themselves go through a similar experience. People who have that empathy without the need of that direct experience tend to have different politics.

stouset• 1 year ago

This is why I'm personally unimpressed by "I supported Trump until it personally affected me and my eyes were opened" narratives.

When I see these stories, it's clear that nothing about that person has fundamentally changed. They didn't care that this same thing was happening to others; in many cases they cheered it on. Only when that same injustice is personally turned against them do they actually care, and they will go back to no longer caring the moment their own pain ends.

AdmiralAsshat• 1 year ago

Except of course this other dig at Biden elsewhere in the article:

“I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones, but I’ve had it longer than he’s had it – well, longer than he’s admitted having it,” Adams said.

The use of the word "admitted" implies that Biden is either lying about how far it has progressed, or that he has known about it longer than he has admitted.

ars• 1 year ago

or that he has known about it longer than he has admitted.

Which is probably true. And it's fine, he has no obligation to disclose this until he wants to. In contrast his dementia though ....... that's something he should have disclosed earlier.

Edit: "Several doctors told Reuters that cancers like this are typically diagnosed before they reach such an advanced stage." from https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bidens-cancer-diagnosis-pro...

Invictus0• 1 year ago

There is a NYT article up right now pondering the same question: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/us/politics/biden-cancer-...

yakshaving_jgt2• 1 year ago

That’s not a dig at Biden. It’s just [almost certainly] true.

conductr• 1 year ago

I’m no doctor but I know PSA test would have identified its existence long before this stated progression. It’s a blood test that would be routine for any male his age, he’s probably had them at least annually for decades of his life at this point

The implied timelines don’t match.

nilram• 1 year ago

"admitting" could also be in the sense of "disclosing". I wouldn't expect anyone, even an elected leader, to immediately disclose a health issue that requires some amount of understanding and decision-making.

There's a segment of the population that thinks he knew while he was running for president but didn't disclose or "admit" the issue to the public. Given that this is an aggressively metastatic cancer, and Biden's campaign ended nearly 10 months ago, I think that's implausible to the point of being ludicrous.

potato3732842• 1 year ago

The use of the word "admitted" implies that Biden is either lying about how far it has progressed, or that he has known about it longer than he has admitted.

Adams doesn't need to imply it when medical SOP implies it.

I understand why Biden would not want to share that info and think that he made the right call for the situation he was in at the time (even before you consider domestic politics it's generally unwise for heads of state to talk about medical problems unless they're imminently stepping down because of them) but every man in this country over 40 knows that this cancer is screened for and someone getting "head of state" level care doesn't just get surprised by this kind of cancer at this stage unless many people were negligent.

jfax• 1 year ago

Scott Adams is basically a sort of older version of Chris Chan. A cartoonist whose unreliable narration of own life became part of the whole performance.

But thing is—boy who cried wolf—not sure if he actually has the prognosis of cancer he says he has? It sounds mean, I reckon he does have it, but his past descriptions of health problems were confusing enough that I wouldn't be surprised if he recovers next year and spins it into a story about how he found a cure.

moralestapia• 1 year ago

Lol, the things you read on the site nowadays ...

I don't think he's making that up.

I absolutely don't think, 100%, not a chance in hell he's making this up.

But I appreciate your comment, it's more data for me to engulf, you never stop learning about the human mind.

evan_• 1 year ago

I’ll admit the same thought crossed my mind until I saw a recent video of him.

aantix2• 1 year ago

I don’t understand why PSA levels aren’t included as part of the standard blood work done with check ups.

tombert• 1 year ago

Not a doctor, but I thought that part of the issue is that PSA tests aren't terribly accurate, and have a lot of false positives.

kgwxd2• 1 year ago

Today, my local news station said they used to. My guess is, carriers decided to keep the money instead.

nradov2• 1 year ago

Which carriers are you referring to? Commercial health plans are subject to a minimum medical loss ratio so they don't get to keep any more money by denying coverage for PSA tests. The general issue is that with only a few exceptions, most cancer screening tests haven't been proven to improve patient outcomes.

kelseyfrog• 1 year ago

Most people with prostates experience a rise in PSA levels as they age. There's no evidence that treatment, especially given how slow, growing prostate cancer usually is, results in a net positive benefit overall. The exception is younger people with aggressive cancer, but you can't exactly limit PSA screening only to young people with aggressive prostate cancer.

henrikschroder3• 1 year ago

My understanding is that it's net negative to test too much.

A lot of men die with prostate cancer, because only very few die from it. And if you belong to the former group, knowing about it or doing any kind of intervention means a massive loss in quality of life. So the best course of action overall is to close our eyes and stop looking. And hope you don't belong to the latter group.

trebligdivad2• 1 year ago

It does depend a bit what the next step is; you can MRI as the 1st step, and that at least is harmless.

dmurray• 1 year ago

It's an indication that something's wrong with the system. We'd get better overall health outcomes if we tested everyone and told a large cohort of people "you do have cancer, and there are these possible treatments for it, but we recommend you don't take any of those treatments and just hope for the best". But between doctors and patients and other healthcare participants, we collectively can't do this - a large minority of people will freak out and demand treatment and the healthcare providers will feel compelled to go along with it.

Perhaps this plan just needs better marketing. Instead of dividing tumors into benign and malignant we could have a third category for malignant but slow-growing.

rightbyte2• 1 year ago

Do you mean most would recover by them self?

edit: Ah ok. Risk of over-treatment by broad scanning? "Active surveillance aims to avoid unnecessary treatment of harmless cancers while still providing timely treatment for those who need it." according to NHS.

waynecochran2• 1 year ago

My doctor tells me that PSA testing has now shown to not be effective so they don't do it anymore. I am 58 and my dad died of prostate cancer so I am concerned.

Herodotus38• 1 year ago

It should be patient dependent. Screening everyone is not currently thought to be useful but those with risk factors should be screened after a discussion of risks/benefits. Your father having prostate cancer (especially if he was diagnosed before age 65) is a risk and I would advocate for it, especially if it something you are worried about and you understand that sometimes a PSA can be falsely elevated in benign conditions, which may mean you get a biopsy that ultimately wasn’t necessary, and the potential risks that could have.

For a good short overview: https://www.cancer.gov/types/prostate/psa-fact-sheet

And read “is the PSA test recommended…”

jonstewart3• 1 year ago

If you’re 58 and your dad died of prostate cancer, I’d insist on PSA tests in your checkups if I were you.

The harm is not the PSA test but in overtreatment too early on—a lot of prostate cancer is slow. Fighting it when it’s stage 4 is no fun, though.

mindslight5• 1 year ago

Think of how full of shit most software developers are. Now think of how much worse their advice would be if they could be sued for wrong answers, but were given all of ten minutes to look at a code base and come up with a recommendation. That's a doctor.

I agree with the sibling advice to insist on PSA labs. You are your own advocate. The primary job of a doctor is actually to be a bureaucrat, the first line of offense for the health management companies whose whole function is to deny healthcare. They can easily rubber stamp a few labs once you change their risk calculus of not doing it, by explicitly laying out your risk factors.

randcraw2• 1 year ago

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/prostate-cancer/detectio...

You have a direct genetic history of prostate cancer, thus you are at higher risk than most men. At age 57 I had no family history and no symptoms, yet my primary care doc suggested I be tested anyway. My PSA was in fact elevated. I got a biopsy and found my prostate was 80% cancerous. I got it surgically removed just in time. 10 years later I'm still cancer free.

Every day I five thanks that my doctor did NOT follow the standard medical advice back then NOT to test. Forewarned is forearmed.

pstuart2• 1 year ago

Sample size of 2 from my family but PSA tests led to biopsy and treatment with full recovery so far (knocks wood). It seems like low hanging fruit in the case where PSA levels spike.

teuobk• 1 year ago

Current evidence is that PSA tests don't actually save lives:

https://thennt.com/nnt/psa-test-to-screen-for-prostate-cance...

I wish they did, of course. I personally lost a close friend to prostate cancer last year. He was 41 and was, before the cancer, one of the healthiest and most athletic people I knew.

The first inkling he had that anything was wrong was a backache that wouldn't go away; a stage 4 diagnosis ensued. He held on for 21 months from the onset of symptoms before the cancer took him.

RandallBrown• 1 year ago

My dad is in his late 70s and has tested at very high PSA levels a few times. So far none of the biopsies have found cancer, but they've caused a lot of stress and discomfort for him.

I don't have a strong opinion about the tests either way, but I wasn't the one getting the biopsies.

aantix2• 1 year ago

That does sounds stressful. Sorry he had to go through that.

I have high psa levels. 17.

Had a biopsy. Turns out I have a really large prostate. My doctor said that some just naturally have larger prostates and the larger ones produce more psa. The psa density function put my levels at normal when taking in to consideration the size. The biopsy came back negative.

apwell232• 1 year ago

i thought only cancerous cells dump out PSA into serum. is that not true?

_--__--__• 1 year ago

In addition to what other commenters have said, the growing market for telehealth finasteride means means that a decent portion of the male population are artificially below baseline PSA levels (and my understanding is that this has some degree of long term effect even if you stop taking the drug).

JCattheATM5• 1 year ago

I was never really reading the strips, but I fell in love with the cartoon. It had a very unique tone with the same famous satire.

Thankfully with all the voice actors and other talent that went into the show, it's easier to disconnect it from the hateful person Adams ended up revealing himself to be.

FrameworkFred• 1 year ago

I have to admit, I'm not up to speed on anything he's been up to lately, but I absolutely read and enjoyed Dilbert way back when. I'm sorry to hear he's not long for the world.

Every time I see someone kitted out in VR gear, I think about his prediction that the Star Trek holodeck will be humanity's last invention and I'm very glad they don't have a button that can beam the next person waiting for their turn into a concrete wall.

tarunkotia• 1 year ago

I am a big fan of Dilbert and really liked one of his books "how to fail at everything and still win big".

aflukasz• 1 year ago

Some of you cite your favorite strips. I will too.

Dilbert comes down to the caves where trolls (accountants) reside and gets a tour. The guide points to a troll sitting behind a desk, and mumbling in a stupor: "nine, nine, nine...".

Guide: And this is our random numbers generator.

Dilbert: Are you sure those are random?

Guide: That's the problem with randomness - you can never be sure.

Edit: Found it here: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-quest-for-rand....

And thank you, Scott - many laughs thanks to you.

teddyh17• 1 year ago

Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/2001-10-25>

ghurtado• 1 year ago

That reads like a XKCD comic disguised as a Dilbert strip.

Very nice.

And also, what a cool read that was, thanks for sharing the article.

ThatPlayer• 1 year ago

XKCD has a different random number: https://xkcd.com/221/

judah• 1 year ago

The following[0] is my favorite because my company is hardening security by making everything difficult and painful, especially single-sign on:

[Mordac] "Security is more important than usability. In a perfect world, no one would able able to use anything."

[Asok's computer screen]: "To complete login procedure, stare directly at the sun."

[0] https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/2007-11-16

fidotron2• 1 year ago

He also covered the opposite extreme:

https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1995-03-25

pwg• 1 year ago

I especially like this one:

https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1998-08-24

It has hit home a time or two when the "managers" hire in a "consultant".

airstrike• 1 year ago

This is a classic and probably my favorite https://devhumor.com/media/dilbert-s-team-writes-a-minivan

teddyh17• 1 year ago

Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1995-11-13>

kbutler2• 1 year ago

Hardware happiness - I've enjoyed checking in to these specs every few years...

35" monitor 20 megs of ram 1.2 gigabytes of hard disk space

https://web.archive.org/web/20150205042406/https://dilbert.c...

teddyh17• 1 year ago

Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1994-02-19>

FireBeyond3• 1 year ago

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fe...

Dilbert is trapped in the bowels of Accounting.

Dogbert: I understand you have Dilbert. Free him, or else...

Troll: Or else what?

Dogbert: Or else I will put this cap on my head backwards! Your little hardwired accounting brain will explode just looking at it!

Dilbert: What was that popping sound?

Dogbert: A paradigm shifting without a clutch.

teddyh17• 1 year ago

Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1995-08-25>

bayindirh• 1 year ago

I keep this taped on my cubicle: https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/2008-02-12

Not because somebody did that to me, but I had to migrate two racks of systems in one night under literal and proverbial heat due to former one.

You can think pointy haired as the embodiment of Murphy of Murphy's laws.

bbaron63• 1 year ago

I still have my Etch-a-Sketch as laptop mouse pad.

profsummergig• 1 year ago

I remember reading this one in the late nineties. Never been able to find it again. It was probably in one of his books:

------------

pointy haired boss making making a presentation: "research shows that customers want high-quality products at low-prices.

but we make low-quality products.

so we are going to sell them at high-prices and call it a strategy"

-------------

If anyone has a link to the original comic, please share it, I would like to see it again. It captures so many themes succinctly, and was very very astute for the late nineties when corps were doing crazy things and calling it a "strategy".

ja27• 1 year ago

One of my favorites.

Also the one where Wally insists his towel gets cleaner every time he uses it: https://br.omega.com/dilbert/311.html

There's one somewhere where they're eating lunch and I think Wally asks Dilbert if he has any extra napkins and Dilbert says he won't know until he's done eating.

teddyh17• 1 year ago

Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1995-11-24>

There's one somewhere where they're eating lunch and I think Wally asks Dilbert if he has any extra napkins

This one: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1994-10-29>

pryelluw• 1 year ago

67 is too young to go from cancer.

unsupp0rted• 1 year ago

Every age is too young to go from cancer. Once we're done with it, we'll look back in confusion about how anyone could think otherwise.

WalterBright7• 1 year ago

I most enjoy his analysis of persuasion techniques and what works and doesn't work. When he first started writing about this, using Hillary v Trump as examples, Hillary suddenly changed her methods.

I remember his remark about Hillary's campaign logo looking like directions to the hospital.

I'll miss him.

w10-1• 1 year ago

Scott Adams' revolution was to get users to give him plot lines.

He was the first to publish an open way to communicate with him in order to out the corporate crazies, and readers did in droves, explaining the inanity of their workplace and getting secret retribution for stuff they clearly couldn't complain about publicly.

A good percentage of youtubers and substackers today actively cultivate their readership as a source of new material. They're more of a refining prism or filter for an otherwise unstated concerns than a source of wisdom.

Doing this seems to require identifying with your readers and their concerns. That could be disturbing to the author if the tide turns, or to the readers if they find out their role model was gaming them or otherwise unreal, but I imagine it is pretty heady stuff.

I hope he (and anyone facing cancer) has people with whom he can share honestly, and has access to the best health care available.

veqq• 1 year ago

a refining prism or filter for an otherwise unstated concerns than a source of wisdom

Grand Budapest Hotel starts with the author stating that when you're an author, people simply tell you stories and you don't need to come up with them anymore!

xnx• 1 year ago

This is a common trend now on TikTok for any "creator" with a moderate follower count. The template goes something like "I'm bored, tell me the thing you bought that you can't do without". The creator doesn't have to do anything, the followers create the content for them in the comments.

pfdietz3• 1 year ago

Remember this one?

https://dynamicsgptipsandtraps.wordpress.com/wp-content/uplo...

"The clue meter is reading zero."

Everyone at Motorola recognized it immediately.

vintagedave2• 1 year ago

Why, what’s the backstory?

teddyh17• 1 year ago

Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1995-03-02>

JumpCrisscross• 1 year ago

good percentage of youtubers and substackers today actively cultivate their readership as a source of new material. They're more of a refining prism or filter for an otherwise unstated concerns than a source of wisdom

Isn’t that all comedy? It’s halting because it’s true. And sure, we may find striking truth through meditation. But it’s more likely to hit you in the real world.

tim3338• 1 year ago

Here's a theory why Scott went from funny to a bit weird alt right. For much of the time he was getting users sending office stories by email, but in more recent times was on twitter and getting info from the alt right bunch on there who push a lot of weird stuff. The reason he got banned from most papers was getting sucked into this stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_okay_to_be_white

7thaccount2• 1 year ago

Dilbert was such a revolutionary comic strip in a lot of ways. Here are a few things related to Scott Adams and Dilbert that have stood out to me over the years. Apologize in advance if any of this sounds like it came from an LLM. Me and most of my family just like to info dump on subjects of interest.

I didn't understand it much as a kid, but later read an old copy of his book on how offices and office culture works (basically each chapter is Scott describing office did functionality with a liberal sprinkling of related Dilbert comics) and literally almost everything was 1:1 with the company I was at, only it was a good bit toned down of course. The beauty was that it was somehow generally applicable anywhere a company gets above a certain amount of employees. There was a lot of good information there such as how the company tries to get you to poop on yourself in your performance review in order to justify not giving you a raise or firing you (see - you yourself said that you needed improvement in working with others). There are many other insights as well that I found useful in my career. A lot of it is common sense, but it helped me come to terms with the irrationality of the corporate world. Every few years I reread it and find it more applicable than before.

He later wrote a book on why he thought Trump beat Hillary and it also had a ton of insights I didn't think about as I'm not a marketer. Anyone on Hilary's campaign team should read it. Of course it doesn't cover how Hilary was painted as some kind of evil queen from a fairy tale since the 90s. Scott kinda acts a bit nuts in this book though as he goes off on frequent tangents about being a trained hypnotist and how he recognized that Trump was doing the same thing. One of the many examples was that both of them went on SNL, but Trump attempted to act presidential, while Hilary was attempting to act more like the common person and it just didn't work and came off unprofessional. He also flew in a plane that looked like Air Force One and gave press conferences with a little fake Oval office desk.

Adams also came up with the term "confuseopoly" to describe companies that make it so hard to compare products and companies that you have to purchase on vibes. Economics textbooks use it now along with his blog example of trying to buy a truck. I see this dark pattern everywhere now.

I hadn't really thought about the twitter angle you talk about, but did notice his blog started changing back in 2016ish. I just attributed it to him running out of ideas for the comic and finding that grifting made him more money. I guess you really can see some of the shift in reading the more recent books, which is sad.

obloz• 1 year ago

If you look, there's a lot of articles and books about "anti-whiteness" and a crusade to both claim a "white race" doesn't exist and that it's also enslaving others. If you live in a segregated area, race relations from blacks to white people have significantly declined. Everyone's radicalized. Add to this the widespread promotion of violent crime statistics and innocent people being attacked and murdered. Unequal justice by juries etc.

Scott just quoted a study saying black people didn't want to be around white people. Whether or not you agree with the above, it doesn't change the reality. Obscuring the history of the Arab slave trade, whites being enslaved, Africans selling Africans into slavery, and dozens of other historical deceptions, have backfired and permanently divided people.

pjc504• 1 year ago

getting sucked into

I've come to believe that infohazards are real.

Consider alcoholism: some people never drink anyway, plenty of people can have one drink or a few drinks and then stop. But some people can't stop and destroy their lives. Consider gambling: similar distribution applies. Many people never gamble, many people have a little scratchcard or sport bet now and then, and some people get out of control and sink all the money they have into it.

Gambling is an idea that's a trap. Some people get like this with ideas on the internet. In fact there's an XKCD about it: "can't sleep, someone's wrong on the internet".

Usually there's a single atrocity or injustice that triggers it. Maybe it's real, maybe it's been subject to distorted reporting. But it becomes a monomania. You can't counter them with statistics or variations on "most people aren't like that".

dragonwriter11• 1 year ago

A lot of people seem to have constructed a history of Adams where he suddenly got sucked into the Twitter alt-right sometime around the rise of MAGA, forgetting that his whole cartoonist origin story is white male resentment stemming from his belief that his progress in management was being hampered by women and minorities and that his decline from that low starting point was being remarked on long before the MAGA era, to the point that it was treated as a long-established fact around the time the term “alt-right” was coined.

alickz• 1 year ago

You see it sometimes on Reddit in /r/comics, where someone will post a comic and then the idea for the next comic comes from a comment on the first one etc.

xhkkffbf• 1 year ago

There were plenty of cartoons in the paper that solicited ideas from readers. There Ought To Be a Law comes to mind, but I'm sure there were others.

https://archive.jsonline.com/greensheet/there-oughta-be-a-la...

hermitcrab2• 1 year ago

I found it hard to reconcile his charming and witty comic strips with some of the ugly things he wrote elsewhere. I would never usually throw a book away, but I made an exception for one of his books, because I didn't want anyone to see it on my bookshelf and I didn't want to give to anyone else.

nightfly• 1 year ago

He really let fame go to his head...

nosrepa• 1 year ago

Was it the pool or the burritos that tipped you off?

john-radio• 1 year ago

I have a personal convention for books like that - I don't have any Dilberts on the shelf but a lot of Neil Gaimans, plus an artsy TTRPG book ("Maze of the Blue Medusa") that's also made by someone who is now widely considered a serial sexual assaulter - I don't (always) remove them from my shelves but I turn them upside down, like a flag indicating distress.

hinkley• 1 year ago

The problem with taking them out of circulation is one less copy at the used book store and one more potential sale of a new copy.

knighthack• 1 year ago

What "ugly things" exactly did he say?

viraptor• 1 year ago

Just search for "Scott Adams racist posts". There's no need for more links to it.

2muchcoffeeman3• 1 year ago

People aren’t just one thing. They can be right about one thing and wrong about other things.

MegaDeKay• 1 year ago

It was an awfully big thing. I had a number of his books along with a little Dilbert doll sitting on top of my desktop PC, and threw it all away for the same reason as the parent poster when I learned of the awful things he'd said.

thephyber3• 1 year ago

We already know that.

The more interesting question is: what do we do with the art of people who were revealed to be terrible? I first saw people wrestle with this idea for Michael Jackson and recently it has been a big issue related to Kanye West.

throw292737• 1 year ago

It basically says more about us than it does about the other person we "admire."

Basically, what do you value more and what can you excuse?

jaggajasoos33• 1 year ago

I think death of his stepson might have impacted him deeply at personal level turning him into a bit of a racist. In Trump he saw a hero who would take up the cause.

hedora• 1 year ago

He went off the deep end at least a decade before that.

After reading his other work, I can’t really enjoy his comics anymore (and I’m a die hard HP Lovecraft fan, FFS).

Anyway, I recommend not looking his other stuff up.

jeffbee2• 1 year ago

I had "Defective People" in the 90s and it was effing crazy how the last chapter went off about how he could manifest reality. That's when I knew he was off his nut.

teddyh17• 1 year ago

That book contains nothing about manifesting.

userbinator3• 1 year ago

Consider that we wouldn't have the life we have today if cancel-culture was the norm several decades ago. Not everyone will be perfect at everything, so just take the good and ignore the rest. Genius and insanity tend to be very, very close.

kgwxd2• 1 year ago

so just take the good and ignore the rest

That's how we have the life we have today. People now seem to be taking it to the extreme, ignoring the rest, even when there is no hint of any good.

wredcoll5• 1 year ago

'Cancel culture' was the norm several decades ago. And several centuries before that.

Just in semi-recent history we had mccarthy 'cancelling' people for purportedly being linked to communism, and that was a whole lot more serious than some modern publisher refusing to buy your book or twitter banning you.

A few decades before that, it wasn't real uncommon that if your neighbors objected to who you were or what you said, for them to hang you by your neck from a convenient tree until you were quite dead.

Humans have always suffered penalties for being on the wrong side of their neighbor's majority opinions. These days the penalties are frankly pretty minor.

qiqitori• 1 year ago

[flagged]

laurent_du• 1 year ago

It's preventable by closing your eyes, but you need to be very persistent. Some people manage to keep their eyes closed for decades, which I find impressive. The rest of us just come to terms with reality.

timewizard2• 1 year ago

I would never usually throw a book away

"I would never judge a book by it's cover."

because I didn't want anyone to see it on my bookshelf

"Yet I am worried that someone else might."

hermitcrab2• 1 year ago

I read the whole book, not just the cover. Some of it made me uncomfortable, and not in a good way.

dragonwriter11• 1 year ago

I always found the bitterness and resentment underlying (but clearly coming through in) the comics in perfect tune with the rest of the works, even if the comics were more prone to focus on areas of life where the bitterness and resentment were more common and less divisive.

tedk-42• 1 year ago

Like many artists, it's hard to separate the art from the artist.

Although I thought his comics growing up were quirky, I was probably too young to appreciate them (xkcd was more my thing anyway).

Knowing more about him and what he says / thinks turns me off Dilbert entirely.

I doubt he'll go as he says. Sounds like a plead for sympathy / attention.

adamredwoods• 1 year ago

If he expects this summer to be his demise, then it must have mutated and spread to vital organs. Metastatic cancer is the true killer. Cancer in your bones can linger for years without progression.

gwbennett• 1 year ago

So sad! Love you Scott!

cityzen• 1 year ago

“All my enemies — people who are Democrats mostly — are going to come after me pretty hard. So I have to put up with that," he said.

Sad that this man is dying of cancer and letting his “enemies” live rent free in his head. I hope he can find some peace before he passes.

BuyMyBitcoins• 1 year ago

I interpreted this differently, because I’ve read a substantial amount of downright cruel comments regarding his life and this diagnosis. He was right about that, and I don’t fault him for wanting to try and reduce the amount of vitriol by holding off on announcing the diagnosis.

Why deal with six months of vicious comments alongside well intentioned pitiful condolences when you could only have to deal with one or two month’s worth?

I would have done the same thing. For what it’s worth, I think an exceedingly small number of people can actually refuse to let those who hate your guts “live rent free in your head”.

righthand• 1 year ago

Terminally ill and terminally online is it then?

mindcrime• 1 year ago

Wow. Very sad news. :-(

I know this will sound dumb, but it's really hard to put into words how much I enjoyed Dilbert in its heyday. I mean at one time Dilbert was one of three web-comics that I read religiously. It was Dilbert, User Friendly, and Sluggy Freelance. The comics weren't just "comics", they mattered to me. Seriously.

Then UF quit publishing new episodes, and then Scott went all alt-right and Dilbert disappeared behind a paywall, and now only Sluggy is still standing. I guess. I have to admit, I quit reading regularly quite some time for reasons I can't even explain.

Anyway... not sure what the relevance of all of this is. Just reminiscing about a day when the 'Net felt a lot different I guess. At any rate, while I'd become less of a "Scott Adams fan" over the last few years, this news still makes me feel absolutely sick. I wouldn't wish prostate cancer on anyone. :-(

CommenterPerson• 1 year ago

Adams did such a great job exposing the absurdities of the American white collar workplace, as seen by the underlings. So it is puzzling how he went over to the dark side of the pointy haired Boss. And the Boss's masters.

I hope some pharma underling might have cooked up some good meds for Adams, despite all the pharma bosses and their backers.

dragonwriter11• 1 year ago

Adams did such a great job exposing the absurdities of the American white collar workplace, as seen by the underlings. So it is puzzling how he went over to the dark side of the pointy haired Boss.

Adams was an MBA, a manager that was resentful that his advancement in management was not as fast as he thought it should been when he left Crocker National Bank for Pacific Bell, and then resentful that he couldn't break into management at Pacific Bell, even while publicly mocking Pacific Bell management (I don't mean indirectly in the comics he was writing while working there, but directly in the media interviews he gave about the comics.)

His only problem with the PHB was always that it was someone else sitting behind that desk, and not him.

karaterobot• 1 year ago

Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that. In the early 90s, my family didn't get the newspaper, so my friend who lived in town would save the comics page for me to read every week. Dilbert was one of the big ones! It was funny and subversive, and I'll remember all the laughs Scott Adams has given me.

irjustin• 1 year ago

If you or anyone in your family history has had prostate, its worth keeping an eye on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43801906

If the hypothesis turns out to be true, prostate cancer could be easily defeated before it has a chance to take a hold.

deepsummer3• 1 year ago

A lot of comments here mention his comics or his controversial pro-Trump opinions in the last 10 years, but I would like to emphasize and point out his influence he had over the lifes of so many people with his life strategies and explanations, microlessons, memes and ways to look at the world. Like

* systems over goals: the theory that you shouldn't set yourself specific goals, but instead just find a system how to work towards your goals regularly

* talent stacks: the theory that, in order to succeed in life, you don't need to be the best in one skill, but good enough in a useful combination of several skills that can be used together

* the idea that managing your energy is more important than managing your time

* the Adams rule of slow moving disasters: any kind of disaster that takes many years to manifest can be overcome by humanity. Scary are those disasters that don't give you enough time to react.

* rewiring your brain: that by finding the right way to look at something, you can modify your own behavior. He wrote a whole book full of recipes to change your behavior and feelings.

* despite not listening to Rap, a long time ago when Kanye West had one of his first successful songs, someone sent Adams the lyrics to some song and by looking at the lyrics Adams recognized West as a unique genius

* you should never trust a video as proof of anything, if you can't see what happened before or after. It's most likely taken out of context. Just like most quotes are worthless without context.

* "perception is reality": that how someone perceives a fact is more important than what actually happened

* "simultaneous realities": realities are shaped by how people perceive them. And two people can disagree on something, while both are right at the same time, because they view the same thing through two different lenses and thus live in different realities.

* TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome): the observation that many people hate Trump so much that they lose the capability of rational thought and either just shut their brain down when talking about anything related to Trump, or want to do the opposite of what Trump wants

* "word-thinking": when someone find labels for things or people, and then forms opinions based on the label

* detecting cognitive dissonance: when someone just shuts down their brain because the experienced reality doesn't match their expectation

* "tells for lies", like analyzing people on TV and looking for clues that they lie

* coining the term "fine people hoax" for a video snippet that was constantly repeated on media to show Trump having one opinion, even though when watching the whole video it was clear that he meant the opposite.

* "logic doesn't win arguments", the rules of persuasion, and the theory of 'master persuaders'

* he predicted Trump winning the 2016 election when Trump had just announced his campaign, long before the primaries, because he recognized a 'master persuader' in him.

And there are probably many more things I don't remember right now, but his books and blog shaped my way of thinking, and I am using his way of looking at the world every day.

I must admit I didn't really follow 'Coffee with Scott Adams' - I think he kind of jumped the shark when having to fill at least 30 minutes every day, and I am not that interested in politics. But that doesn't diminish his accomplishments.

JCattheATM5• 1 year ago

TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome): the observation that many people hate Trump so much that they lose the capability of rational thought and either just shut their brain down when talking about anything related to Trump, or want to do the opposite of what Trump wants

This isn't a real thing, it's just something his zealots throw at critics to dismiss them.

jajuuka• 1 year ago

It's the equivalent of responding on Reddit with "straw man". It's meant to be a conversation finisher where the writer declares victory. But they aren't saying anything at all.

Sohcahtoa82• 1 year ago

TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)

I've always thought the definition of TDS was completely backwards. I've too often seen legitimate criticisms of Trump deflected with claims of TDS. Certainly it's the zealous cult-like worshipping of Trump that's deranged.

https://imgur.com/a/n1MjXxI

pstuart2• 1 year ago

That fits the pattern of projection that crowd tends to engage in. Same thing for the "Woke Mind Virus" actually being the infection that affects them.

deepsummer3• 1 year ago

It can certainly also be used the other way round by people who defend Trump no matter what. But I have seen enough people who clearly weren't even able to discuss Trump's policy because the thought that Trump could be right about anything was unacceptable to them. And often that thought caused a very emotional reaction.

GuinansEyebrows3• 1 year ago

"every accusation a confession"

th0ma5• 1 year ago

Kinda wild how no comments here suggest that this person's disingenuous nature has made many believe that this is made up. It will be discouraging to find out.

deepsummer3• 1 year ago

As Scott Adams would tell you, it doesn't matter whether he made it up. If you believe him, that's your reality. If you don't believe him, your reality is that he's faking it. You can chose your reality and that act upon it.

pjc504• 1 year ago

There are certain things that when you stop believing in them, they don't go away, and cancer is one of them.

gblargg2• 1 year ago

I considered it when watching his podcast today. Low change, but if he was it would be for a noble cause.

Maybe he's been recruited to work for a secret organization taking over the world and has to fake his death to quietly exit public life. /s

jagermo2• 1 year ago

Sucks for him, I hope he recovers or manages somehow. On the other hand, he is not a good guy. If you want to go deeper, there are some episodes on Behind the Bastards dedicated to him. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

ak_111• 1 year ago

I appreciated Dilbert, but then he started showing up in my timeline amplifying pro-Gaza bombings tweets.

I was surprised and disappointed with that as those Hasbara takes were the geopolitical propoganda equivalent to pointy-hair boss's office politics speech balloons ("the only way to rescue the hostages is to bomb everything, including the captors... and the hostages").

jagermo2• 1 year ago

oh, he was problematic waaaaayy before that, but that tracks.

gatlin2• 1 year ago

I'm using my real first name here and I hope he uses his remaining time to contemplate the ethnic cleansing he has championed. He isn't done yet; I pray he reverses.

jasonm23• 1 year ago

smh at these people, Israel went full mask off and had the gall to blame "anti-semites" for... what exactly? Demanding justice for people they're bombing.

Wild disgusting times.

But Scott had gone full mask off a ways before that. It's very sad that people we once admired turned out to be disgusting.

Gud• 1 year ago

Scott Adam is the reason why I chose not to pursue a career in IT, despite my love for computers.

Today I am an on site high voltage test engineer. People respect what I do and let me do my work in peace, mostly.

Reading the horror stories I so often see coming from the IT world, I am grateful to use my computer skills mostly as a hobby. Although my computer and networking skills do come in useful in my profession, I’m glad it’s not the source of my income.

incomingpain• 1 year ago

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1159580425/newspapers-have-dr...

I wonder what he has been up to the last couple years.

sota_pop• 1 year ago

Always was a fan of Dilbert, but I especially enjoyed a short story he wrote called God’s Debris when I discovered it as a young undergrad. Sad news indeed.

reverendsteveii• 1 year ago

I thought he was going to be hunted for being a Republican. That's what he told us.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/dilbert-creator-scott-ad...

DrillShopper• 1 year ago

I can't believe Joe Biden personally gave Scott Adams cancer and accidentally gave it to himself, too!

I hope all of those Republicans feel safe now that the mean Biden administration stopped deporting them to torture prisons./s

_DeadFred_• 1 year ago

Once I became a software developer my mom gave me a Dilbert desk calendar every xmas. She had worked in tech startups since 1979 and loved Dilbert. She was the type of person to always try and bring the positive, never complain. I like to think that Dilbert gave he a chance to release some things/commiserate with me.

awkward• 1 year ago

In the 2000s at least, many cubicles had at least one Dilbert up. If you worked there for a while, you probably knew the story and it could get a chuckle out of you. Some people had two. More than four visible Dilberts, however, was a terrible sign.

aaroninsf• 1 year ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZIm_2MgdeA seems relevant

Dilbert creator Scott Adams says he will die soon from same cancer as Joe Biden

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