Business, Health, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Sad News

9 Comments

Scott Adams has terminal prostate cancer.

[Thursday-morning update]

A eulogy for Scott Adams.

Well, he’s not dead yet, but it’s probably nice to be able to read and hear all the nice things about you while you are still alive to appreciate them.

9 thoughts on “Sad News”

  1. I worked for MCI from ‘93-95. I swear it was like Adams was in the next row of cubicles. Whatever management fad de jour came up, it was in a Dilbert comic soon afterwards. I heard it was because a vast number of tech workers were sending him stories about the management idiocies, so he never had a shortage of useful material. I’m going to miss him.

    Perhaps my all time favorite Dilbert comic is this one. It was especially funny when I moved into a new building with motion sensors that kept turning out the lights. Dilbert had the solution!

    https://i0.wp.com/drkblake.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Dilbert-journalism-major-workforce.png?ssl=1

  3. I knew he was very sick from watching his “Coffee With Scott Adams Videos” over the past few months. The decline over the past year has been dramatic. Sad to say I’m not surprised and was expecting this very sad news. Tragic.

    1. I’ve been watching him regularly ever since he was cancelled, and it became an important part of my day. Yet it wasn’t until two days ago that I saw that he was in ill health. My wife listens to his podcasts only once or twice a week, and, like you, she knew he was very ill. My lack of perception perplexes me, but I didn’t see this coming. It was therefore a very big shock to me this morning as I listened to him in real time. I’ve been really depressed about it since the end of the episode.

      It became clear over the last couple of years how close he and Gutfeld are, and how much Adams’ thinking influenced Gutfeld. What is more amazing is how much Adams’ thinking has influenced the public, without anyone really noticing or attributing it to him. I’m not talking about his humor, though that is legendary. But he has shaped the language of our discourse in ways people don’t realize. The terms “frame”, “reframe” and “framing” are new to our discourse, and are very widely used these days – and he originated them. The same with “talent stack”. His various books (“Win Bigly”, “Reframe Your Brain”, “God’s Debris”, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big”, etc.) have promulgated ideas that now permeate the culture – or half of it, anyway – and have changed the lives of a great many people for the better.

      His public thought process in unravelling the corruption of virtually all American institutions has helped to open the eyes of a huge section of the electorate. More importantly, his handy set of rules for spotting misinformation and disinformation have armed otherwise trusting people to spot the gaslighting by the Leftist institutions, especially the media. One of his least noticed rule is my favorite, because I came up with it myself more than 40 years ago: “If a headline in an article consists of a question, the actual answer is ‘No.'”

      I am so sorry he is suffering as he is, and am just as sorry that we are going to lose another bright, completely underappreciated light.

      1. Adams is a great communicator. He took a lot of pre-existing concepts and repackaged them into easily understandable frameworks.

    2. I read him daily but don’t have time for his podcast. I only noticed he looked like he had lost some muscle mass. Knowing a bit about the tragedies in his life and now, what he has been going through, it explains a lot about why he has certain opinions on things.

      His blog posts were good reads and those look to be gone now? I wonder what will happen to his videos and paywalled material.

      Crazy to think back to the 2016 election when he came to political prominence.

  4. My Dad died from metastatic prostate cancer when he was 87. They did the hormonal treatment, and he lasted about a year after diagnosis (which was sudden). It was a miserable way to go. I was just diagnosed with a 1.7cm suprasellar pituitary adenoma, so we’ll see how that goes. Maybe no big deal, maybe I smell toast?

    I transitioned from blue to white collar work when I was 34. White collar workers are mostly worse than what was in Dilbert, making me think no college until you’ve gotten dirty for ten years. (I was a sewer worker.)

    1. The problem with that idea is that mathematicians tend to burn out in their early to mid 20s. Have them “get dirty” for ten years and you’ll end all advances in the field.

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