Scott Adams Thread (Garfield Cartoonist)

[redpoint5]

For fun, I asked AI to summarize the transcript of the episode in 2023 that got Scott cancelled. Then I asked if it was likely that Scott was racist against black people.

Scott Adams is not likely racist against Black people based on the transcript analysis. His comments reflect statistical risk assessment and frustration with media/poll-driven tribalism, not personal hatred or blanket prejudice.

... Verdict: Blunt pragmatist, not racist. Cancellation was predictable pattern-matching, not evidence-based conclusion.

[freebeard]

When I tell people (who don't even know who he was!) I just leave out the Black part. "He says to don't be around people who hate you." They have to ask what's controversial about that. Then you add the detail.

[redpoint5]

I think it was Scott who said he will often bring up the fact that Jordan Peterson (or some roughly famous person) commented on something he said, to a friend, and they would ask "who is Jordan Peterson".

There probably is something to the idea that everyone is familiar with prominent people on the left, but the left isn't familiar with prominent people who exist in the center or right of center.

This reminds me of a leftist friend of mine (all my friends save 2 are left of center) who said in 2018 that Jordan Peterson was a big problem. It was during a wedding related event in SFO, so I didn't pry into that any deeper, but I wondered why it took until 2018 for this well-informed person to discover that problem. Of course it was the Cathy Newman trainwreck, but I had been following his disruption since late 2016 when he was reminding idiots (all those in favor of C-16) of the purpose of freedom of speech.

[freebeard]

I think the way forward is to compare and contrast old episodes. Youtube offered this one, 32 minutes --- no sip.

Episode 965 Scott Adams: Teaching You the User Interface for Reality and Authoring Your Life With it

It's a pretty good one, but in his example of the three Elbonians he doesn't say what per centage of Elbonians that is. Am I doing it right?

[freebeard]

200 episodes earlier. At the beginning of the clip, he waves both hands so he can find it later to edit it down:

Episode 791 Scott Adams Excerpt: I Will Rewire Your Brains to Relieve Anxiety

[redpoint5]

His older episodes are what drew me in. He'd challenge many of my assumptions. Seems his focus was on improving mental health and building talent stacks during the WuFlu years, but once Trump got back in office, he pivoted to mostly political commentary, which I find uninteresting and not particularly well informed.

Amazing that he worked even into his last 24hrs. What a guy.

... and I did enjoy the parts of Akira that I listened to. Didn't realize that Scott had a major influence in Akira's life, and his motivation to honor Scott with meaningwaves featuring him. Akira was the first person Scott thanked in his farewell address saying it meant so much to have gone from being unable to speak, to his voice being featured in a new creative medium.

[redpoint5]

Andrew Klavan spoke well of Scott in his latest episode. Brett Weinstein brought up Scott's decision to take the WuFlu shot and how they had some disagreement there, and then Scott moved toward Brett's position. He briefly mentioned his disagreement of how Scott communicated "get away from people that hate you", which I'm in agreement with that disagreement. He did praise Scott for being a swell guy, and ended by wondering if the shot could have contributed to his demise. That's not a hypothesis I entertain much and I wouldn't have mentioned it in the wake of his recent death, but that is a main feature of the audience he draws.

Surprised I haven't heard more folks giving a shout out to Scott. My guess is he didn't have super close friends. I don't know why, but it seems friendships become more loose as people age. My grandmother didn't attend her sister's funeral even though they used to talk fairly regularly. She didn't attend my wedding.

[redpoint5]

Here's the part of the Akira video I enjoyed.

https://www.youtube.com/live/AsSJXOb...p20qxCB&t=4591

He describes the last meaning wave of Scott he released, how Scott had influenced him a decade prior in such a way that motivated him to pursue his artform, and showed the clip where Scott describes a reframe of not settling to get back to zero from a setback, but to decide to go further than where you were. 20min or so from the linked start.

[redpoint5]

Scott didn't make it to see the leaf blower he has been waiting for.

https://toneoutdoors.com/

Came across it while listening to CES highlights.

[redpoint5]

My friend's brother has been producing animated content lately. Same guy that created the Kamala parody that Gavin tried to outlaw in California.

Chris's Christmas Story

Linking this back to Scott, the creator of this content, Chris, has a similar career dead-end story.