In 2016 he said Trump would win in a landslide and there would be rioting. Trump lost the popular vote and won the electoral college by a margin of less than 100k votes in three states. This year he tweeted that Republicans will be hunted, telling his followers that they will be dead in a year. We’re supposed to take him seriously?
Before he pegged my personal BS meter and I just started ignoring anything from him that I happened across, I noticed that Adams seemd fond of a lot of "cold-reader" type tricks: vagueness that can be turned into specifics after the fact, ignoring their own failures while hyping their successes, that kind of thing.
If you want to see what actual serious prediction attempts look like, search for Nate Silver or Nassim Taleb.
They've both had their moments where they got a bit too full of themselves as well. Taleb in particular.
I checked back recently and it seems they've both come back down out of the clouds, but I don't hold either of them in as high of regard as I did a few years ago.
Weren't everyone's predictions wrong in 2016? I remember news organizations like the New York Times saying that Clinton had a 91% chance of winning the election.[1] 538's Nate Silver said that Clinton had a 99% chance of winning.[2] Scott Adams has many faults, but his 2016 election prediction fared better than pretty much everyone else. Remember he predicted a "win against Clinton in a tight election" in August of 2015.[3]
Actually if you go look at the NYT polls, Trump had a monumental surge in the later half of October that caused the result to look much closer. Probably no small part of this was the additional FBI investigation into Clinton's emails, which was announced Oct 28 (10 days after the NYT article you posted).
If you go look at the polls from right before the actual election it looks significantly closer:
It's not completely unthinkable for a 20-30% probability event to occur. Further, it is quite a rare occurrence for a candidate to win the election without winning the popular vote: This was only the fifth time in American history it's happened.
Right. My point was that if you use 2016 election predictions as evidence that Adams is delusional, then you should also use major media organizations' 2016 predictions as evidence of greater delusion. Adams called the election a year beforehand. At the same time, Nate Silver was giving Trump a 2% chance of being nominated. The dude is batty in some ways, but he clearly saw something that most of us didn't.
> then you should also use major media organizations' 2016 predictions as evidence of greater delusion
Why? They responded to evolving evidence and sentiment (specifically, the FBI announcement on the 28th). 538 gave Trump a 30% chance to win on election day. 30% isn't a super unlikely event. People regularly take a chance on events with much less likely outcomes.
Here's an analogy: Harvard has a 4.5% acceptance rate. If a mediocre student tells me in June that they're going to apply in September, my prediction is going to be that they will not be accepted. If in August they tell me they've randomly received a letter of recommendation from a US senator after saving them in a car accident, I'm going to change my opinion from "very unlikely to be accepted" to "moderately unlikely to be accepted."
That doesn't mean I was stupid or delusional to think in June that they were very unlikely to be accepted, and that still doesn't mean I'm delusional to think they will still likely be rejected (the mainstream media polls). That also doesn't mean that the person who told the mediocre student in June that they were a shoe-in for Harvard was prophetic by any means (Scott Adams).
> The dude is batty in some ways, but he clearly saw something that most of us didn't.
Ehh, or he just got a lucky guess? A broken clock, etc. etc.?
For an analogous situation, this happens in sports media all the time: Some sports entertainment personality will make a "hot take" that's really just a contrarian opinion based on little evidence. If they're wrong, no one cares. If they're right, they look like a prophetic genius. Either way, they win because they get attention for making a bold prediction.
Whether you want to call it confirmation bias/selection bias/whatever, I implore you to think about all the times Scott Adams has been incredibly wrong and whether you think he actually has some unusual insight or whether he just made a lucky guess based on his personal biases.
It's extremely likely that if the election had been held October 27th, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Think about that for a second.
I don't think this comment adds anything of value to this conversation. Lots of horrible people have said wise things, and lots of great people have said horrible things. Their reputation and the merit of a given thing that was said is uncorrelated.
I mean, there's a long list of people who said things people find offensive: Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman, Barack Obama, William Shockley, Freeman Dyson, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. It takes fairly little maturity to not let that take away from the insightful comments they have made.
The "horrible" or dumb things you said are absolutely relevant toward whether it is reasonable to assume you know what you talk about.
In particular, the offensive things Stallman said or did are absolutely relevant when he would spew quotes about relationships or people.
It is different when he talks about philosophy of open source. But on those particular topics, he is not being insightful as he is dumb as brick o that topic.
Care to give a link? Last time someone actually came through with links to their allegations about Scott Adams, all of them were false, misleading, taken out of context, etc., except one: the old sockpuppet incident from nine years ago.
Hounding him by, whenever his name is mentioned in any context, bringing forward example after supposed example of how he is somehow not competent enough to ever be allowed to have a receptive audience. Even though this very example you brought up is a prediction of just this kind of thing?
I've counted two instances of me bringing examples of his odd behaviour, in a total of two comments. Your assertion of "whenever his name is mentioned in any context" feels like I'm missing some cases considering how many times his name was mentioned in this sub-thread.
You’re not the only one to do this, as you can see elsewhere in this thread. But you were the first person to bring up his current US right-wing popularity and vaguely allude to “poor choices recently” and tweets containing unspecified badness. You did this as an off-topic comment to a comment which compared the topic at hand, self-control, to Adams’ “systems vs. goals” approach.
Your "hounding" accusations of me here are unproductive and your "off-topic" assertion is dishonest. Scott's wild tweets about Republicans being hunted points to someone with some "issues" -- not unspecified badness.
While he may have good points in some cases, his thinking is compromised and you cannot discount that. I don't think this discussion will be productive beyond this point and wish you well.
Again, you are, without elaborating, claiming that he has ‘some “issues”’, makes “wild tweets” and that “his thinking is compromised”, without saying anything specific or elaborating further. If that’s not alluding to unspecified badness, then I don’t know what is.
I mean, you keep pointing to these tweets and not saying what’s wrong with them, as if it should be completely obvious to everyone. Hint: It’s not. It’s probably only obvious if you’re already predisposed to interpret everything he writes in the worst possible way. Then I’m sure it’s obvious. But it’s not obvious to me, for example.
If you had ever explained exactly what you thought was wrong with them, anyone here could have argued with your interpretation, and possibly put forward an alternative, more reasonable, interpretation. You would most certainly not have agreed, but at least the argument would have been made in the open, and every reader could then decide for themselves. But as it is, since you don’t actually make an argument, only vague allusions, anyone objecting to your characterizations would have to guess what you meant, and then argue with this made-up opinion. However, this would be bad form, and you could then always claim not to have that exact opinion and cause any argument made to be irrelevant.
Therefore, please, tell us what’s wrong, don’t just say “look, look, bad thing here: <link>”. That’s not an argument. Don’t do that. Make your case explicitly.
In closing, what is and is not on topic might be a matter of opinion, but I don’t appreciate being accused of dishonesty. If you don’t think that I am arguing in earnest, then I agree that not much productive debate can be had between us.
Might not be hunted in a literal sense, but you can damn sure bet you'll meet the downvote brigade around here and many other places if you say something that puts Trump in a positive light.
I don't know if that's true compared to a lot of other places on the internet. That was one of the reasons I came when I stayed. People, while still subject to their political bias, are much more likely to debate by actual facts rather than allegiance here.
I agree. Things tend to stay above the belt here, which is nice.
There are certain threads / topics that seem to really hit a nerve though. Perhaps it's on me for sometimes poking the bear when I shouldn't.
I have had comments with a literal 30 point swing that oscillated back and forth a couple times from negative (capped at -4, a great thing for people to know since I think it makes people bolder in what they're willing to say) to around 30 points, then back to zero, and finally settling at like +3.
Those comments weren't "flame bait" (which I have been guilty of on a couple occasions), but simply solid points with a conservative tilt to the them that really just drive a certain group of people nuts.
I agree that we should all strive for "facts over allegiance", I think that's a great way of phrasing it.
Why? You can’t just say something is “unbelievable” without further comment. He has explained in other places, in some detail, what happened in all three instances, and his summary is essentially correct (unless you think he’s making it all up, of course).
>Yes, very California bubble to think that women are equal and not like children or mentally handicapped
He doesn't say that women are not equal. If you read the particular article the line is from, he makes a totally unrelated argument in that line and in that comparison: that men don't attempt to argue with women because they're emotional/unreasonable in arguments.
And to translate casual talk for those that have to read everything literally, he means that some men, some of the time, don't attempt to argue with women because some women are emotional/unreasonable in some arguments. (That is, a seemingly absolute statement in a casual phrasing - not e.g. in some logical notation - doesn't translate to "absolute everybody/all the time/100%", but usually to some or at worse, most).
> But perhaps I can summarize my viewpoint so you can understand why I’m such a misogynist asshole douche bag. Here’s my view in brief:
> You can’t expect to have a rational discussion on any topic that has an emotional charge. Emotion pushes out reason. That is true for all humans, including children, men, women, and people in every range of mental ability. The path of least resistance is to walk away from that sort of fight. Men generally prefer the path of least resistance. The exception is when men irrationally debate with other men. That’s a type of sport. No one expects opinions to be changed as a result.
I would not normally try to summarize a long complex explanation, but I would think that this section would also be crucial to include in any summary:
> First, some background. A few weeks ago I asked readers of this blog to suggest a topic they would like to see me write about. The topic that got the most up votes, by a landslide, was something called Men’s Rights. Obviously the fix was in. Activists had mobilized their minions to trick me into giving their cause some free publicity. In retrospect, the Men’s Rights activists probably should have done some homework on me before hatching this scheme.
> As you can see, I thought it would be funny to embrace the Men’s Rights viewpoint in the beginning of the piece and get those guys all lathered up before dismissing their entire membership as a “bunch of pussies.”
Taken at face value, that argument is nonsense. If you do that, the beginning of the piece serves as propagation of MRA women are inferior viepoint. And is treated as such.
The latter insults "bunch of pussies" does not cancel the beginning. It does not correct what you wrote about women either. It just makes women collateral damage in you strughle for dominance against MRA.
You mean, if you take a piece of it out of context, and remove the text following it, it can serve to mean something completely different than what was intended? My point exactly.
Also, from the same original text, Adams writes:
> I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group.
So he’s explicitly and clearly saying that he’s not saying that women are “like children or mentally handicapped”, just so that nobody gets him wrong. But then, of course, everybody takes the first quote, cuts it out of context, removes the clarification, and parades it around the internet like a hideous rallying flag.
> As you can see, I thought it would be funny to embrace the Men’s Rights viewpoint in the beginning of the piece and get those guys all lathered up before dismissing their entire membership as a “bunch of pussies.”
1. He's one of those people that thinks Trump is playing 4D chess.
2. He 'successfully' predicted Trump would win the election, and has subsequently fooled himself into thinking he has some special insight into social dynamics and interpreting Trump's 4D chess that allows him to continue making accurate predictions. I'm sure the more predictions he makes, the closer he'll get to a 50% success rate (binomial theorem) - as do most 'expert' political prognosticators who aren't using statistical models but going off their intuition. I wonder if he'll figure out what's happening.
When I read his writings, I just see an incredibly naive approach to prediction, ignorant of probability, that is primarily informed by the fact that he's a Republican who therefore is biased towards favorably interpreting Republican odds.
To be fair, he's been predicting for two years now that Kamala Harris would be on the Democratic ticket.
That is maybe nothing special, but I never heard of her, and she was a garbage fire when she campaigned here in Iowa. So I thought that was noteworthy.
"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” - Carl Sagan
If you want to see what someone who is credibly trying to predict events look at the work of Nate Silver or Nassim Taleb. When you obsess over one prediction by person most known for comedy and questionable personal statements, it's neither difficult nor inappropriate to put them in the clown category.
If Adams himself wants to build his reputation as a prognosticator, he can easily create a publicly-verifiable record of them and any questions of his ability will answer itself in short order. That he has not (to the best of my knowledge) done so makes him look like a huckster.
The thing you should take from Scott Adams isn't his predictions.
It's the fact that he has spent 30 years writing Dilbert, which means he has followed the pulse of general office-culture, coupled with the fact that he is a train hypnotist, so he knows how people think.
Basically, he will often give an interesting take on some current event that gives you a perspective on the situation that you hadn't considered.
Like NN Taleb and Nate Silver, once you've groked their general schtick (long tails, Bayesian probability) there isn't a whole lot new they have to offer. It's worth checking back in on them from time to time, but you're unlikely to be blown away by anything you see.
Mike Cernovich is a lot more interesting to follow on Twitter than Scott Adams. Adams is basically a pundit at this point. Cernovich is more of a journalist, so he follows and retweets breaking news that you're likely to hear about in the upcoming news cycles.
The thing I like to keep in mind is that its important to follow people you don't always agree with, because otherwise you are missing out on a lot of perspectives and don't have as good a view of the current political landscape.
Getting caught defending yourself online with multiple account makes you look bad and is petty, but it's not nuts.
Admitting to something when there's prevailing evidence against you isn't nuts either.
Almost all HNers have no clue what it's like to have people coming together in great numbers to talk bad about you (to say nothing of whether you "deserve" it).
The guy can't even get away with marrying a younger consenting adult woman without being burned at the stake.
Was kinda nuts. Nine years ago. About whether using sockpuppets was remotely acceptable. On that specific forum, on that specific topic. OK, sure.
Sockpuppet accounts for trolling used to be common on several niche forums on the internet (which is how this practice got a name), especially this many years ago. I could certainly see how someone could be confused about how sockpuppeting was or was not acceptable behavior on a specific forum. He might have thought (but I’m speculating here) that he was engaging with (i.e. trolling) the forum within the (semi-)established norm of behavior for that forum.
Is that all the rope with which you would have him hanged? That stump is so short that you couldn’t even tie a knot with it.
If Adams only had kept his observations about Trump to himself, none of this would be an issue. But no, now everybody’s gotta find those crucial six lines somewhere in all the things he’s ever written, and whenever someone mentions anything he’s ever said, especially if it’s not about Trump or about politics in any way, it must be overwhelmed with random lists of accusations, all of which are false, misleading, or ancient and irrelevant, or all three. Merely to thoroughly discredit anyone even remotely associated with Trump.
Looking at Google Groups, my first post to Usenet was in 1993. So yeah, I know something about early consumer Internet culture. Even then sock puppets were frowned upon.
My first post to Usenet was in 2019. Its message ID is <1562970678.bystand@zzo38computer.org> in case you want to try to find it. Who else made their first post to Usenet in 2019 or 2020? (I think there was one other, although I cannot find it right now.)
On Usenet, sure. But in LiveJournal comments? On the Something Awful forums? Things were much wilder on the murky corners of the web in the darkness of the eternal september than they were on Usenet, even in the alt.* hierarchy.
Which is a far more convincing argument when someone can point to a well-documented set of predictions, than when they claim "I'm right a lot" and try to get you to fall for an association fallacy.
People can be brilliant in some areas and absolutely batshit in others. I think that is the norm not the exception actually. If you discount their brilliance because of occasional batshittery you’ll miss out on a lot of insightful stuff.
