Dilbert - C or D?

in five seconds an alpha is about to speak

Echidne thinks he might be depressed:

http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2016/10/where-echidne-dons-her-pseudo.html

I think the consensus here is that's a bit generous

possibly nsfw: https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/788806380840886272

oh cool scott adams is weighing in on climate change! http://blog.dilbert.com/post/154679929646/watching-the-climate-science-bubbles-from-the

Given the wildly different assessments of climate change risks within the non-scientist community, perhaps we need some sort of insurance/betting market. That would allow the climate science alarmists to buy “insurance” from the climate science skeptics. That way if the climate goes bad at least the alarmists will have extra cash to build their underground homes. And that cash will come out of the pockets of the science-deniers. Sweet!

i would suggest consulting someone other than the non-scientist community but scott adams already hypnotized me into thinking that the ideal solution to rising sea levels would be an underground home. that's what i get for being a climate science alarmist i guess.

My bottom-line belief about climate science is that non-scientists such as myself have no reliable way to evaluate any of this stuff. Our brains and experience are not up to the task. When I apply my tiny brain to sniffing out the truth about climate science I see rock-solid arguments on both sides of the debate.

Trained scientists might be able to sort out the truth from the B.S. in climate change science, although I’m skeptical about that too. But non-scientists have no chance whatsoever to discern which side is right. I consider myself to be bright and well-educated, and from my perspective both sides of the debate are 100% persuasive if you look at them in isolation. And apparently that’s what most citizens do.

So, he doesn't believe in deference to scientific authority? I wonder what other scientific results he's agnostic about because he isn't an expert in those fields.

Light bulbs: evidence of "electricity," or the final proof of our invisible pixie friends and their commitment to well-lit human interiors? I see rock-solid arguments on both sides of the debate.

And I think I spotted a new cognitive phenomenon that might not have a name.* I’ll call it cognitive blindness, defined as the inability to see the strong form of the other side of a debate.

I think this gets to the bottom of it - dude thinks he's the be-all-end-all of intellectual discussion, and simply doesn't read anything

in case you didn't think his take on climate change could get any dumber

Remind your scientist that as far as you know there has never been a multi-year, multi-variable, complicated model of any type that predicted anything with useful accuracy. Case in point: The experts and their models said Trump had no realistic chance of winning.

Your scientist will fight like a cornered animal to conflate the credibility of the measurements and the basic science of CO2 with the credibility of the projection models. Don’t let that happen. Make your scientist tell you that complicated multi-variable projections models that span years are credible. Or not.

one of the dumbest motherfuckers around

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156591306416/the-persuasion-filter-looks-at-torture-does-it

lol @ this guy defining both "the persuasion filter" and "the Hitler filter" THEY'RE THE SAME THING YOU IDIOT (okay that's from a different post but still)

But if President Trump – The Master Persuader – tells you someone else’s facts are bullshit, you can usually take that to the bank. The man knows bullshit when he sees it. And with his skillset he can also smell it coming from miles away.

*head explodes into a thousand pieces*

also lol at the idea that people literally prepared to blow themselves up for a holy war would crack after 5 seconds of torture

he is a bullshitter that means you can trust him

I kind of love that the guy who does dilbert is obsessed with corny bunk like NLP and spends his days wanking over a copy of the game and writing smug crackpot blog posts about hypnosis. Because how could he not be?

really makes u think (that u are a chicken)

this is astonishing

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158812654486/trump-and-healthcare

With the failure of the Ryan healthcare bill, the illusion of Trump-is-Hitler has been fully replaced with Trump-is-incompetent meme. Look for the new meme to dominate the news, probably through the summer. By year end, you will see a second turn, from incompetent to “Competent, but we don’t like it.”

I have been predicting this story arc for some time now. So far, we’re ahead of schedule.

In the 2D world, where everything is just the way it looks, and people are rational, Trump and Ryan failed to improve healthcare. But in the 3D world of persuasion, Trump just had one of the best days any president ever had: He got promoted from Hitler to incompetent.

let me remind you that this line of argument comes from one of Trump's most diehard supporters

Adams has the constant air of a chump trying desperately to convince you that everything that has happened is exactly as they expected it would be.

does the theory explain why Trump didn't just make people just think he was competent in the first place, rather than getting there via Hitler and incompetent?

true hypnotists have long known that Hitler and Incompetent are the essential first two steps to total control. amateurs often miss that which is why they are not president. scott adams could be president too, if he wanted to.

oh man how did no one link the article about him where a vague comment referenced his ex-wife still being employed as his assistant? maybe i'll find it later

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-22/how-dilbert-s-scott-adams-got-hypnotized-by-trump

I read it and thought it presented him in a pretty good light. Adams himself of course proceeded to whine endlessly about it, even though he said he knew from the beginning that it would be a "hit piece".

He made the case that even the most erratic Trump moments were tactically brilliant—and that this was an insight that he alone could see. “My predictions are based on my unique view into Trump’s toolbox of persuasion,” Adams wrote at the outset, reminding readers that he was a certified hypnotist. “I believe those tools are invisible to almost everyone but trained hypnotists and people that study the science of persuasion.”

ok so, about this. have any other 'certified hypnotists' or 'people that study the science of persuasion' came out of the woodwork to say the same? seems like it's a totally unique view because it's total bullshit.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/aliens/images/0/0b/Hypnotoad.gif/revision/latest?cb=20081007151100

How is this dude not already a key player in the administration?

When Trump insulted Carly Fiorina—saying “Look at that face!”—Adams declared it a “linguistic kill shot” that would end her bid. “She does have what I call the angry wife face when she talks politics,” he wrote. “Guys, you know that face.” When Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” Adams said he obviously hadn’t meant all Mexican immigrants, only some—and that “intentional exaggeration is a … standard method of persuasion.” When Trump called for a ban on Muslim immigrants, Adams wrote: “In the 3D world of emotion, where Trump exclusively plays, he has set the world up for the most clever persuasion you will ever see.” He dubbed Trump’s technique “pacing and leading”: He was getting the attention of anti-immigration crusaders, before scaling back to a more moderate stance. When Trump asserted that things were worse for African-Americans in 2016 than at any time in history—prompting many to remind Trump about slavery—Adams wrote, “Facts don’t matter. Every trained persuader knows that.”

Only trained hypnotists are smart enough to recognize these brilliant methods of persuasion: hate speech and lies.

Adams’s house is a shrine to the cartoon character that made him rich. One section, visible from the pool area outside, clearly resembles Dilbert’s head, with two oval windows for eyes, connected by a thin line that suggests spectacles. “They look out from the cat’s bathroom upstairs,” Adams told me. The structure is full of indulgent quirks. In the kitchen, Adams installed three microwaves so he “can make a lot of popcorn at once.” Nearby, he transformed a bar area (Adams doesn’t drink) into a display case for Dilbert books and paraphernalia. Other features include a 10-seat movie theater, a gym, and a room filled with beauty salon equipment, where his ex-wife (now Adams’s personal assistant) used to host spa days for friends. Off to the back is an indoor tennis court.

used to or... still does

Adams has the constant air of a chump trying desperately to convince you that everything that has happened is exactly as they expected it would be.

This is the entire lynch pin of dude's worldview; he's basically a real-life version of Pangloss from Candide.

Pangloss is my favorite beta male.

pangloss orbiter

nice throwaway on "the cat's bathroom"

yeah, that article is full of amazing deadpan observations about the patently bizarre world of scott adams, the man who has an inkling that straight-up losing the power of speech for a couple of years might have contributed to the decline of his marriage and who is currently the the paramour of an instagram bikini model

btw, has adams ever explained why the master persuader trump nevertheless has so many people fervently opposed to everything he says and does and don't seem likely to ever change their minds?

I try to ask that question and the answer I get back is usually something like "he persuaded the people he needed to in order to win the presidency". which is kinda like saying the Patriots intentionally played like shit the first three quarters of the Super Bowl so they could win it in OT.

the bit that gets me is that he's constantly tooting his horn on this: "you should listen to me because I'm the only one who got it right when everyone else got it wrong", which is like...okay, but you also kept saying "landslide" like an idiot, when in fact your guy won by a slim EC margin and had the biggest negative vote differential in history. plus your prediction changed every week as Trump continued to brilliantly shoot himself in the foot day after day. reality is a lot of people were calling a Trump victory, but they were mostly people like Bill Mitchell who I'd imagine a guy like Adams wouldn't want to associate with too much.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxzrnQgVEAAGuBO.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyoHcQ-VEAAZtDn.jpg

Adams goes full Alex Jones on the tragedy in Syria:

I’m going to call bullshit on the gas attack. It’s too “on-the-nose,” as Hollywood script-writers sometimes say, meaning a little too perfect to be natural. This has the look of a manufactured event.

My guess is that President Trump knows this smells fishy, but he has to talk tough anyway. However, keep in mind that he has made a brand out of not discussing military options. He likes to keep people guessing. He reminded us of that again yesterday, in case we forgot.

'a manufactured event?' does scott adams believe poison gas attacks are usually natural occurrences? are those dead kids actually faking it? what a fucking tool

maybe he means the CIA did it

imagine being so insane that you can look at a pile of corpses and think it's 'too perfect'

the conspiracy theory du jour from idiot the_donald'ers is that assad is winning the war so he wouldn't have any reason to delegitimize his regime further by using chemical weapons now. the deep state manufactured the attack in order to force trump to attack syria and discredit his administration.

*looks at schindlers russian word primer list* "says right here it's more of that horseshitsiya!"

Dilbro's argument is even worse - hows this for an opening sentence

According to the mainstream media – that has been wrong about almost everything for a solid 18 months in a row – the Syrian government allegedly bombed its own people with a nerve agent.

always thought this dude was idiotic but the sudden turn into Infowars territory is a bit surprising

if you truly believe that trump is a genius then i guess no further logical leap is too far

http://i.imgur.com/fJQQt74.png

idgi, is he saying that neocons are the ones who orchestrated this supposed false-flag war crime in Syria? is he on some kind of Jewish conspiracy tip?

beginning to see why Adams usually doesn't usually make falsifiable predictions

its a bit.......unusual

If you've got a couple hours to kill his appearance on Sam Harris's podcast is...something. I think the idea was to find an "intellectual" Trump supporter to debate and Dilbro was the best they could do. It is horrifically cringeworthy, with Adams starting out of the gate arguing that there really is no such thing as objective reality, then proceeding to ding Harris for using analogies and making assumptions about what Trump is really thinking, even though Adams can't get through a single thought without doing either of those things. Harris does an okay job busting his balls on his idiotic nonsense but he lets so much slide, mostly because Adams won't stop interrupting him. But mostly it's interesting to hear how hard a Trump supporter has to flail when confronted with reality. Some of the things Adams is saying - like the idea that Trump is playing nice with Putin in public but actually "fucking him under the table", or that Trump is actually motivated by complete selflessness, taking shots to his image In order to do the right thing - are insane to the point where you wonder if Adams developed some sort of degenerative brain disease in the last 15 years.

knowing what I do of Sam Harris, I wouldn't even want to hear him, let alone Adams

Yea I'm not really a fan, just wanted to hear someone actually challenge the dude

afaict Sam Harris only picks arguments with people he knows he can "beat" in a debate, or in stronger confrontations, refuses to release unedited audio/video

I listened to a bit of it, but Adams is fucking boring and he was just going on and on.

Hey guys, Scott Adams has finally received his due attention by academics!

Call for Abstracts

Scott Adams and Philosophy
Edited by Dan Yim, Galen Foresman, and Robert Arp

“My hypothesis is that the political side that is out of power is the one that hallucinates the most—and needs to—in order to keep their worldview intact. For example, when President Obama was in office, I saw all kinds of hallucinations on the right about his intentions to destroy America from the inside because he ‘hates’ it. That was a mass hysteria. If President Obama wanted to destroy America, he failed miserably. We’re stronger than ever” (from “The Magical Thinking Opposition,” Scott Adams’s Blog, August 22, 2017, http://blog.dilbert.com/).

You wouldn’t expect a quotation like this to come from the likes of a guy who produced the comic strip, Dilbert, but satirists like Scott Adams are usually pretty sharp people. So sharp, in fact, that a week after the first Republican debate in August of 2015 where most everyone in America thought Trump had definitely done himself in with his Rosie O’Donnell reference in response to Megyn Kelly’s obviously loaded question about Trump’s misogynistic comments, Adams predicted in his blog: “he will be our next president” (“Clown Genius,” August 13, 2015). As the Trump campaign continued on, Adams kept pace and blogged almost daily about Trump’s ability to hypnotize and persuade the American public. In October of 2017, Adams’s book will be published: Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. Besides the impressive array of philosophical topics exhibited in Adams’s blog posts, there are, of course, the topics that have been expressed over the 28 years or so that Dilbert has been produced. This book seeks to explore many of Adams’s philosophical thoughts, ideas, and arguments.

Any relevant topic considered, but here are some possibilities to prompt your thinking:

- Logic and the use of persuasion
- Grandiose delusions, self-deception, self-efficacy, self-serving bias, and their usage in persuasion
- A description and assessment of Adams’s persuasion filter
- Adams’s understanding of hypnosis as a persuasive tool
- How to characterize stupidity
- Adams’s assessment of the everyday person’s procedure of rational justification for belief assessment
- Whether truth is over-rated.
- Might truth be a kind a grand project of chasing after windmills?
- Fake it until you make it: adaptive self-deception.
- Socrates, self-awareness, and the Dunning–Kruger effect
- Philosophy of humor
- The epistemic value of humor
- Can humor reveal the truth about reality in ways that formal arguments cannot?
- What is the philosophical usefulness of satire?
- Dilbert, and the nature and value of corporate bodies
- On Norm Solomon’s claim, “The Dilbert phenomenon accepts—and perversely eggs on—many negative aspects of corporate existence as unchangeable facets of human nature... Dilbert speaks to some very real work experiences while simultaneously eroding inclinations to fight for better working conditions.”
- Is the Peter Principle a real principle?
- Eudaimonia and the meaningfulness (or lack thereof) in vocation.
- What role does work or vocation play in the flourishing human life?
- Normative ethical systems and workplace behavior
- Four stages of competence and ultracrepidarianism in the workplace or other areas
- Characters of Dilbert comics as tropes of different philosophical theories of human nature
- Pessimism versus optimism about the human condition
- Nietzschean perspectives on life
- Sartrean existentialist perspectives on life
- Camus’ absurdist perspectives on life
- Kierkegaardian hope in the midst of absurdity
- God’s Debris, The Religion War, God, and panpsychism in philosophy of mind
- God’s Debris, The Religion War, self-deception, delusion, and religious belief
- God’s Debris, The Religion War, and the epistemology of religious extremism
- How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, happiness, and the good life