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 · 2h 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!
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 · 50m ago
He really let fame go to his head...
nosrepa · 35s ago
Was it the pool or the burritos that tipped you off?
aflukasz · 3h 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.
Pointy-haired boss: "According to the anonymous online employee survey, you don't trust management. What's up with that?"
<Dilbert looks back with a blank stare>
---
Godspeed Scott. Thank you for all the laughs.
al_borland · 6h 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.
atonse · 4h 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)
al_borland · 1h ago
I built a suggestion box for a team at work like this. It was pretty basic. The page had no login, and no tracking of any kind. The DB only had an index, the date, and the suggestion. The source was available to everyone who would use it, and if they wanted I would have shown them the DB. These people also had root access to the server it ran on, so if they were really paranoid they could clear any system logs. The site was also heavily used for the day to day work, so the noise from everyone on the page would obscure any ability to tie a single IP to a time stamp without a lot of effort and a large chance for error.
Over the course of 4 years I think it was only used 3 times. Most people assumed it was some kind of trap. It wasn’t, I genuinely wanted honest feedback, and thought some people were too shy to speak up in a group setting, so wanted to give options.
mschuster91 · 3h ago
There's commercial service providers and open-source projects doing that already.
The thing is, as soon as you allow free-text entry, the exercise becomes moot assuming you got a solid training corpus of emails to train an AI on - basically the same approach that Wikipedia activists used to do two decades ago to determine "sockpuppet" accounts.
kevin_thibedeau · 2m ago
Just run it through encheferizer.
nightshift1 · 2h ago
unless you add a step where you ask an ai to paraphrase what this message is about.
mschuster91 · 2h ago
Good point, but also liable to get crucial informations and details lost or, worse, completely misunderstood by an AI which by definition lacks contextual knowledge.
protocolture · 1h 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.
dpc_01234 · 4h ago
Great teacher gave you an invaluable life lesson.
kirubakaran · 2h ago
In the same way that pickpockets give you a great lesson in not keeping your wallet in your back pocket
JohnFen · 5h 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 · 5h ago
A simple trick is to write with your non-dominant hand :-)
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. :-(
ravenstine · 7h 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.
legitster · 5h 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.
rightbyte · 2h ago
I think Dilbert's cubicle nightmare frozen in time is somewhat charming.
willis936 · 1h ago
Imagine the luxury of a cubicle in 2025.
sonofhans · 49m ago
You had cubicles? Luxury! Im my day, we put our spare-parts laptop on an old door for a desk and sat on a rickety metal chair on a concrete floor in an unheated warehouse. And we loved it!
hiccuphippo · 48m ago
Headphones are the cubicle of 2025. Or maybe VR goggles.
dhosek · 3h ago
Sometime in the late 90s Dilbert pretty much became Pluggers but without the attribution to the readers sending in their ideas.
paulddraper · 3h ago
That's true.
Dilbert is about the 90s.
ghaff · 3h 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.
mdp2021 · 6h 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 · 6h 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.)
jakevoytko · 6h 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.
rhines · 3h 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.
prepend · 6h 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.
jimt1234 · 6h 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
fidotron · 3h 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 . . .
jimt1234 · 9m ago
Wally, totally relaxed, reading the newspaper, as everyone else is freaked out, trying to meet an upcoming deadline. Everyone later learns that all the current projects have been cancelled by the new VP, just to make the previous VP look bad. I believe this is when Asok, the intern, started calling Wally "the master", something like that.
dctoedt · 3h ago
Since we're posting favorites, here's one about lawyers, which I show to my contract-drafting students every semester:
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.
teddyh · 5h ago
> Catbert on work life balance: "Give us some balance, you selfish hag"
Back in the 90s, I worked on a "side project" that screen-scraped the daily Dilbert strip and added it to an internal "employee portal" website. A lot of people liked it, including all the pointy-haired middle managers. However, after about a week, I was told to remove it immediately, not because of the legal/ethical issues around screen-scraping (stealing) the strip, but rather because this particular day's strip was about Dilbert's company laying off a bunch of employees so the company's executives had more money to buy vacation homes (or something like that), and, by coincidence, our company announced a massive layoff on that exact same day. The timing was totally coincidental, but perfect. Executives were furious; my boss told me he got yelled at by our VP. I loved it.
josephcsible · 4h ago
Reminds me of when someone did an April Fools prank that printers would require payment to use, and then got in big trouble, but only because management was about to implement that policy for real: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43543743
alpaca128 · 4h ago
Thanks, I couldn't remember where it was from but I find it so funny that he had to write a second apology, for claiming in the first that they didn't plan to do it.
ChrisMarshallNY · 2h 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.
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.
jason_oster · 53m ago
I have to disagree with this, sadly. Supporting the work is supporting the author so they can continue doing terrible author things. This is why boycotts are effective and "oh well, I'll just keep buying it anyway" is not.
mcv · 6h 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.
JCattheATM · 4h 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...
abirch · 5h 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.
elcritch · 5h ago
He seems to play the media like a fiddle. It's insane how gullible so much of the media establishment is nowadays and play right into it.
butlike · 4h ago
It's not gullibility; it's a symbiotic relationship.
astrange · 4h ago
They like it because he's good for views, and because US politics media runs on Murc's law (anything bad is the Democrats' fault for not stopping it).
mcv · 5h ago
I haven't read it yet, but I've got it right here, and I just finished my previous book.
However, the fundamental ideas of System 1 and 2 have made me rethink so many things.
libraryatnight · 6h 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.
WalterBright · 2h 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.
stevenwoo · 55m 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.
Kye · 1h 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.
JKCalhoun · 6h 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 · 6h 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.
slg · 2h 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.
AdmiralAsshat · 3h 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.
conductr · 2h 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
Most men aren't rich enough to live to 82 or to become president. Rich people, and especially important people, get many more medical tests done than the rest of us.
No way he and his doctor didn't know about this.
sorcerer-mar · 1h ago
The guideline to stop screening at 70 has nothing to do with financial cost. It’s that detecting it at that point is useless because you’ll generally be dead of other causes by the time it catches you.
Compounding the issue, the rate of false positives rises as you get older which then 1) freaks people out and 2) encourages them to get more invasive tests done which are themselves increasingly hazardous (and less valuable) with each passing day.
There are a lot of good reasons not to speculate about others' health decisions on the Internet, and avoiding a spotlight on your own basic ignorance is one of 'em!
fwip · 11m ago
Yes, because most men won't live to be 82, so on average it's not worth it. But presidents are not "most men." They're also
attended by personal physicians who can keep them from freaking out when informed accurately of their health.
I would appreciate less condescension about my supposed ignorance, but I guess that's unrealistic.
sorcerer-mar · 9m ago
Doctors don't adjust how long they're trying to keep you alive based on your job title.
Doctors also don't believe that rich people are somehow immune to the psychological trauma of "you might have cancer → nvm all good → you might have cancer → nvm all good → you might have cancer → nvm all good."
That’s not a dig at Biden. It’s just [almost certainly] true.
ars · 3h 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.
I am a big fan of Dilbert and really liked one of his books "how to fail at everything and still win big".
adamredwoods · 41m 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.
aantix · 4h ago
I don’t understand why PSA levels aren’t included as part of the standard blood work done with check ups.
teuobk · 3h ago
Current evidence is that PSA tests don't actually save lives:
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 · 2h 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.
aantix · 1h 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.
henrikschroder · 3h 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.
dmurray · 3h 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.
trebligdivad · 3h ago
It does depend a bit what the next step is; you can MRI as the 1st step, and that at least is harmless.
burnt-resistor · 3h ago
MRI machines need to be a) democratized so they're cheaper and everywhere and b) connected to trustworthy clinically-proven radiological AI to identify and watch growths. There's absolutely no rational reason any patients should end up with surprise terminal cancers or surprise coronary artery disease.
(Yes, yes whole body scans exist but these are largely pseudo-medical scams that don't deliver what they promise. I'm saying deliver on it, within reason.)
trebligdivad · 1h ago
It would help if they weren't damn slow; taking up an expensive machine for an hour is not a way to be cheap!
rightbyte · 2h 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.
waynecochran · 3h 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 · 2h 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.
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.
tombert · 4h 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.
_--__--__ · 2h 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).
kgwxd · 4h ago
Today, my local news station said they used to. My guess is, carriers decided to keep the money instead.
nradov · 3h 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.
FrameworkFred · 4h 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.
JCattheATM · 4h 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.
cityzen · 16m 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.
gwbennett · 35m ago
So sad! Love you Scott!
jfax · 5h 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.
ineedaj0b · 2h ago
you should probably chill out man. it's fine to be a skeptic but, of all ulterior motives to have, brushing up against death for gain is something no one sane person would do. 99% of people don't remember the political positions of the Whig party and no one will remember our views in 150 years either.
hug your family and spend more time with them.
moralestapia · 43m 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.
RajT88 · 2h ago
This. Scott Adams has become such a wingnut, he took this moment to make Biden's diagnosis about himself.
Even if he is being 100% truthful, this is kind of crappy behavior - the kind we expect from him.
No comments yet
pryelluw · 3h ago
67 is too young to go from cancer.
tedk-42 · 1h 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.
Dilbert was as much an era as he was an icon. Good luck in the great cube farm in the sky, Scott.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 6h ago
Bummer. Despite his recent controversy I have enjoyed his humor for decades and will continue to remember him for this.
WalterBright · 2h 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.
jonstewart · 6h 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.
lupusreal · 6h ago
He's become so weird in recent years that I'm not even sure if I believe him or if this is another one of his weird spooky meme fortune teller stunts or something.
Dilbert was a good comic though.
tombert · 4h ago
I liked the comic ok, but I was actually a much bigger fan of the cartoon series that came out in the late 90's. It has, in my opinion, one of the most underrated opening title sequences out of any show.
I love that show enough to where I actually bought an animation cel from it a few years ago, and it hangs in my basement office.
heresie-dabord · 46m ago
Thank you for mentioning the series. I confess didn't know about it -- it's brilliant!
"We think you have missed an important demographic — Consumers."
space_ghost · 3h ago
I have three of the cells, framed in my office. I adored the TV show.
unethical_ban · 6h ago
He looks fairly gaunt and hairless in the photo. Seems plausible.
Well, I enjoyed Dilbert for years, in any case. It shares the throne with "Office Space" for representing the pre-remote-work era of corporate IT.
paulpauper · 6h 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.
tim333 · 4h 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.
ainiriand · 6h ago
Check your prostate yearly past 45-50. Through check with ultrasound.
chasil · 6h ago
My physician stopped recommending any testing when I turned 50.
I still ask for the PSA test. I've never been offered ultrasound.
unsnap_biceps · 6h 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 · 6h 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.
Suppafly · 2h ago
Scott Adams has such a tenuous grasp on reality, it's hard to say if this is real news or just some sort of weird boomer version of clout chasing. If it's real, I hope he has some medical choices left, but he's also a horrible person.
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.
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!
https://dynamicsgptipsandtraps.wordpress.com/wp-content/uplo...
"The clue meter is reading zero."
Everyone at Motorola recognized it immediately.
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.
[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
https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1995-03-25
Very nice.
And also, what a cool read that was, thanks for sharing the article.
<Dilbert looks back with a blank stare>
---
Godspeed Scott. Thank you for all the laughs.
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)
Over the course of 4 years I think it was only used 3 times. Most people assumed it was some kind of trap. It wasn’t, I genuinely wanted honest feedback, and thought some people were too shy to speak up in a group setting, so wanted to give options.
The thing is, as soon as you allow free-text entry, the exercise becomes moot assuming you got a solid training corpus of emails to train an AI on - basically the same approach that Wikipedia activists used to do two decades ago to determine "sockpuppet" accounts.
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.
I've seen the pattern repeat with other data collection as well -- "anonymous" data collection or "anonymized" data almost never is.
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. :-(
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.
Dilbert is about the 90s.
Probably also because, like e.g. "Yes (Prime) Minister", part of the depicted did come from anecdotes, instead of fantasy.
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.)
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230301101359/https://dilbert.c...
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.
Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1998-05-05>
> The other, I can never seem to find.
Here you are: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1993-08-30>
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)
Chapelle's SNL monolog about Trump is pretty spot on too.
However, the fundamental ideas of System 1 and 2 have made me rethink so many things.
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.
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.
> “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.
The implied timelines don’t match.
No way he and his doctor didn't know about this.
Compounding the issue, the rate of false positives rises as you get older which then 1) freaks people out and 2) encourages them to get more invasive tests done which are themselves increasingly hazardous (and less valuable) with each passing day.
There are a lot of good reasons not to speculate about others' health decisions on the Internet, and avoiding a spotlight on your own basic ignorance is one of 'em!
I would appreciate less condescension about my supposed ignorance, but I guess that's unrealistic.
Doctors also don't believe that rich people are somehow immune to the psychological trauma of "you might have cancer → nvm all good → you might have cancer → nvm all good → you might have cancer → nvm all good."
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...
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.
I don't have a strong opinion about the tests either way, but I wasn't the one getting the biopsies.
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.
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.
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.
(Yes, yes whole body scans exist but these are largely pseudo-medical scams that don't deliver what they promise. I'm saying deliver on it, within reason.)
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.
For a good short overview: https://www.cancer.gov/types/prostate/psa-fact-sheet
And read “is the PSA test recommended…”
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.
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.
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.
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.
hug your family and spend more time with them.
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.
Even if he is being 100% truthful, this is kind of crappy behavior - the kind we expect from him.
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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.
I remember his remark about Hillary's campaign logo looking like directions to the hospital.
I'll miss him.
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.
Dilbert was a good comic though.
I love that show enough to where I actually bought an animation cel from it a few years ago, and it hangs in my basement office.
"We think you have missed an important demographic — Consumers."
Well, I enjoyed Dilbert for years, in any case. It shares the throne with "Office Space" for representing the pre-remote-work era of corporate IT.
I still ask for the PSA test. I've never been offered ultrasound.