Scott Adams

As far as Adams' ego goes … he has a certified genius I.Q., and that's hard to hide.

If experience is necessary for being president, name a political topic I can't master in one hour under the tutelage of top experts.

Be the billionaire you want to see in the world

Scott Adams has a self-reported IQ of 185, and don't you forget it. He is an American trained hypnotist and cartoonist known for Dilbert, a long-running satirical comic strip about a white-collar office worker in America. His blog, which is currently a fascinating study of a man going insane, attracted major media attention during the 2016 election. Long before that, he advanced some crank positions, including questioning evolution and the validity of the fossil record. He has appeared on InfoWars, further cementing his genius IQ.

Adams has a Bachelor of Economics from Hartwick College and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Before his Dilbert career, he worked in telecommunications as a damager manager; Scott has embarked on a new life as a social engineer. He currently lives in a house shaped like Dilbert and has a matrix of microwaves for making large quantities of burritos and popcorn at once while writing about how neocon interventionism is just a persuasive tactic.

Adams' social media insanity finally caught up to him in February 2023 when, in a YouTube video, he described all Blacks as a "hate group". This led to many large newspapers as well as Dilbert's distributor dropping the comic. To those who have followed Adams' decline into madness since at least the mid 2000s, however, this thoroughly racist statement, while awful, was not much of a shock or a surprise given his past history.

Pro-worker?
Dilbert became popular in the 1990s because he was able to capture the disenchantment of office cubicle workers with their jobs and their corporate employers. However, as Norman Soloman pointed out in his 1997 book, The Trouble with Dilbert, Scott Adams was always a tool for those corporate employers, as he turned away their resentment from the entities that caused their predicament — corporations and their fat-cat managers — towards the scapegoat, that is, middle management. Soloman also pointed out that he was actually rather popular with the very corporations he "criticized", to the point he earned big bucks from their sponsorships of various merchandise, and unpopular with the very organizations that actually defend workers (that is, labor unions), at the same time as actually defending some of the things that caused said predicament, like corporate downsizing.

Adams knows The Secret
…I get paid the same no matter what I do. In his 1997 book The Dilbert Future, Adams professed his belief in the bit of woo known as the law of attraction (a concept popularized by the 2006 book The Secret), claiming that he has achieved multiple life goals through the power of positive thinking alone:

Borderline Holocaust denialism
In a 2006 blog post (which has since been deleted), Adams flirted with Holocaust denialism, questioning whether estimates of the number of people killed during the Holocaust are reliable:

If he actually wanted to know where the figures come from, he could have used his genius IQ looked on Wikipedia or used his Internet skills to Google it or even asked an expert as he once recommended, but posting in a blog is an odd way to find an authoritative source for any fact and smacks of JAQing off.

Struggling to understand evolution
In March 2007, Adams posted a piece on his blog seemingly questioning evolution, in which he stated that the fossil record doesn't pass his baloney detector:

His explanation for why he deems fossils "bullshit" seems to be the product of an extremely garbled understanding of paleontology and evolutionary biology:

Advocating Pascal's Wager
In his post about fossils, Adams stated that he does not believe in "Intelligent Design or creationism or invisible friends of any sort." However, in a 2007 blog post, he appeared to express the view that atheism (defined here solely as claiming there's no God) is essentially a form of dogmatism, and he used a version of Pascal's Wager to defend belief in an invisible friend God:

Amusingly, Adams blurs percent certainty with percent probability; these are different. In addition, probability cannot be calculated for events with zero historical data or evidence backing the event up. Adams' purported chance of ending up in Hell, 0.00000000001%, is entirely arbitrary and could have easily been 0.00000000002% or even a Schlafly Statistic. His larger point that a fraction of infinity is still infinity is true but come on! Applying pseudo-risk management to religious decisions? Of course, most atheists are not claiming they know God doesn't exist, especially not with perfect certainty, apparently an unknown fact to Adams (though easy to find out), so he attacks a strawman from the beginning.

"Science kicked me in the balls!"
In a 2015 blog post, Adams blamed science for the tendency of the media to misrepresent science, accusing science of "being silent when bad science morphed into popular misconceptions." He went on to offer the following muddled understanding of the scientific process:

Steven Novella called that blog entry "a rant against science, arguing that the public is justified in not trusting the findings of science because science has been wrong before." Novella responded: "He makes two major errors in his analysis. The first is to confuse mainstream media reporting of science with the science itself. The second is to have an incorrect image of how science progresses over time." Although Novella acknowledges, "There is a legitimate criticism to be made in terms of scientific institutions putting more resources and value into communicating science to the public," Novella criticizes Adams for "contributing to the very problem about which he is complaining."

Global warming


Though Adams says he doesn't reject the consensus, he makes up "reasoning" for why science isn't convincing the "skeptics". As with other points, he is more JAQing off rather than offering valid suggestions to convince the deniers. He calls the climate scientists "alarmists" and gives poor "reasoning" for why the "skeptics" aren't convinced, mainly because things look "fishy". He demonstrates a poor, simplistic understanding of climate change; for instance, he tried comparing prediction models for global warming to financial models and concluded that since financial models cannot predict the future, neither can models made from very predictable long-term phenomena. He also asks for accurate economic models to show how it affects states of affairs, something well out of economic expertise. And then, he says economic models are worthless.

He thinks that since several models point in one direction, scientists are manipulating data. On the other hand, according to science, many models predicting the same outcome make it more robust at prediction. The suggestion he makes, which is "using the same models and assumptions" — plural, still! — means he clearly contradicts himself. To have a sheen of credibility, he should have gone with: "model and assumptions".

He also saw an article (without specifying it or referencing it) that said humans are responsible for more than 100% of warming because otherwise, Earth would be cooling. He thought this was silly and, therefore, climate science is dubious. Since the beaches he saw look "normal", and he saw Google results that "debunk" the rise in sea levels, climate science is fishy and can't be trusted. He doesn't like it when the climate change "alarmists" resort to a version of Pascal's Wager because "[t]he world is full of risks that might happen. We don't treat all of them as real." He makes arguments that are typical of denialist talking points, including "Earth went through natural cycles before" and "why is there a decrease in Arctic ice and an increase in Antarctic ice" (with no regard to nuance, such as ice specified), stating that there are record cold AND record heat times or periods, with disregard for the big picture.

If these are questions the climate change deniers want to pose to climate scientists, it only shows how ignorant they are, not that they want results that don't resemble a financial scam.

Women's work, brains, and opinions
In March 2011, Adams posted a piece on his blog in which he appeared to use some standard MRA talking points, stating that wage disparity between men and women is the result of men "get[ting] better results" than women because "on average, men negotiate pay differently and approach risk differently than women," and also apparently attributing the lower number of women in high managerial positions to an unwillingness to sacrifice "family time" in exchange for career advancement. However, he seemingly advised MRAs that it is pointless trying to fight "the widespread suppression of men's rights," on the apparent grounds that women are simple-minded and we're supposed to be nice to simple-minded people:

In response to the backlash he received, Adams deleted the post from his blog, apparently forgetting that it's impossible to make something disappear once it hits the Internet. He left a comment on the blog Feministe, stating that objectors to the post were failing to understand it because their "reading comprehension" was compromised by "emotion", unlike regular readers of his blog, who he claimed have "an unusually high reading comprehension level" and "are pretty far along the bell curve toward rational thought, and relatively immune to emotional distortion."

In the introduction to Your New Job Title is "Accomplice", a compilation of Dilbert comic strips released in 2013, Adams claimed to have suffered "reverse discrimination" in the 1990s, alleging that his bosses at the time told him he was "unqualified for any sort of promotion because [he] had boring DNA and a scrotum." This contradicts an interview he gave in Inc. magazine in 1996, in which he stated he "told all of [his] bosses [he] would resign if they ever felt [his] costs exceeded [his] benefits," and then voluntarily complied when he was eventually asked to resign due to "budget constraints".

Adams published a piece on his blog in March 2012 seemingly defending Rush Limbaugh's calling Sandra Fluke a "slut" for her advocacy of mandatory inclusion of contraception in employer insurance plans. In the piece, he stated, "My interpretation of events is that Limbaugh saw Fluke as a capable adult, and a public figure, tough enough to handle some harsh language." In 2015, he revisited the subject of women's opinions, writing that men talking over women in meetings is inevitable, as women are more likely to be interrupted because they are "more verbal than men," and "anyone who talks too long without adding enough value" is fair game.

Male sexuality and consent
In June 2011, Adams posted a piece on his blog that "society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable," with men's "natural instincts" apparently representing a desire to "act like unrestrained horny animals."

In November 2015, Adams published a similar piece on his site, lamenting how sex was not a guaranteed reward for being nice to women and that "access to sex" requires consent:

Adams further argued in the piece that males have such an uncontrollable need for sex that being denied it inevitably leads them to suicide and violence:

He also contended that the United States is a "female-dominated country" and a "matriarchy," in contrast to "DAESH-held territory" in the indisputably male-dominated Islamic Middle East, where he claimed, "top-ranked men have multiple wives and the low-ranked men either have no access to women, or they have sex with captured slaves." He suggested that the way to stop DAESH is to tell potential recruits that, while "killing infidels" will net them "virgins in heaven," killing the leaders "holding the leash on [their] balls" will grant them instant access to actual human women.

Hillary kicked men in the balls
In June 2016, Adams posted a piece on the 2016 U.S. presidential race on his blog, writing that the "biggest unreported story" of the election cycle was the "humiliation of the American male". As evidence of this rampant misandry, he cited a dishwasher detergent ad featuring the stereotypical bumbling, housework-inept husband, who just so happened to be wearing a V-neck sweater. According to Adams, V-neck sweaters are "the uniform of a man who is owned by a woman," and he has thrown out about twenty-five such sweaters given to him as gifts by women trying to turn him into a beta cuck. Apparently, Adams saw the scourge of cleaning product ads and V-neck sweaters as portending the "largest male turnout of any presidential election in American history," and thus the election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

Adams followed this up in July 2016 with a piece arguing that the Democratic National Convention represented a "celebration that [men's] role in society is permanently diminished." As he explained, the convention, featuring the first female presidential candidate for a major party, was held in an "impressive venue that was, in all likelihood, designed and built mostly by men," and that "men [got] to watch it all at home, in homes designed and built mostly by men, thanks to the technology that was designed and built mostly by men."

This affront to men was so severe that Adams suggested, quite seriously, that watching the DNC had tanked men's testosterone and made them miserable:

Nonetheless, Adams made a point of stating that he was endorsing Clinton "for [his] personal safety," as he was convinced "[his] safety [was] at risk if I [was] seen as supportive of Trump." On the other hand, Trump supporters did not represent a threat in Adams' estimation since they apparently "don't have any bad feelings about patriotic Americans such as [himself]." Adams predicted (correctly) that Trump would win. He stated that he didn't plan on voting, as his "views don't align with either candidate," and he wanted to "protect [his] objectivity."

It was all a lie, though. Following Trump's election, Adams showed he had a raging hard-on for Trump.

Racism
In a June 28, 2020 tweet, Adams made the following comment in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement:

To which Brianna Wu replied: "Maybe that’s more on you than them for creating such an overwhelmingly white cast of characters."

However, in a 2006 interview, he explained the show's cancellation this way:

Adams later engaged in a Twitter argument with comic book artist Bill Sienkiewicz, during which Sienkiewicz suggested they have a drawing challenge for charity. Birds of Prey writer Gail Simone suggested the challenge benefits Black Lives Matter. In a now-deleted Tweet, Adams stated, "I wouldn't give to a violent, racist group like BLM, but more importantly not the least in interacting with you."

Sienkiewicz later posted on Facebook:

In late February 2023, an ill-advised Rasmussen poll that asked, without any context, on agreement with the phrase "It’s ok to be white". 72% of all respondents agreed with the statement compared with 26% of Black respondents. Respondents had not been informed that the phrase is considered hate speech and was devised by 4chan. One could conclude that White people are less likely to recognize coded hate speech because they are less often the target of it than Black people, but Adams instead went on a racist rant against Black people on his YouTube channel: If nearly half of Blacks are not OK with white people — according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll — uh that’s a hate group. That’s a hate group and I don’t wanna have anything to do with ‘em. And I would say the best advice I could give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people.

In the same YouTube rant, Adams cherry picked examples of the black brute stereotype by declaring that he was "really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens," insisting that "every damn day" he sees a clip of "some Black person beating the shit out of some white person." Adams is presenting a severely distorted view of crime, because studies dating back to the 1980s have consistently shown that most victims of violent crime are attacked by perpetrators of the same race.

Although a few papers had dropped the Dilbert cartoon in the 2020s (due to, as one editor put it, the tone of the strip changing from "being hilarious to being hurtful and mean"), generally speaking, until this point, Adams' increasing toxic online behavior had not affected Dilbert syndication significantly. However, calling all Black people a hate group was the final straw for many newspapers. Multiple newspapers responded to Adams' racist rant by immediately pulling Dilbert; in addition, Dilbert's syndicator announced that they would no longer work with Adams.

Predictably, Adams followed up this video with a typical strange deflective rant, where he attempted to redefine racism as any interaction between races whatsoever, and in particular ranted about corporate employment equality efforts as "racist" for some reason.

In early March 2023, Adams further dug himself in the hole he made with an interview with. In the interview, Adams dismissed the very possibility that any Black person could have been offended by what he said — this despite widespread criticism of Adams' remarks from many, including multiple Black cartoonists. Adams also used his super genius IQ to complain about "anti-white" bias via a string of semi-nonsensical Republican propaganda bullet points. ("Social media shows an anti-Whiteness bias. Businesses do, ESG, CRT, all these corporate and government things.") Adams also weakly and implausibly tried to excuse his racism by claiming that he was "intentionally courting controversy".

Online sockpuppetry
In 2011, Adams admitted that he had used a sockpuppet account called "plannedchaos" to defend himself in a MetaFilter discussion criticizing a piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal. As "plannedchaos," Adams wrote, "he [Adams] has a certified genius I.Q., and that's hard to hide," and asked detractors, "Is it Adams' enormous success at self-promotion that makes you jealous and angry?" On his blog, Adams defended this act of self-aggrandizement, stating, "Conflict of interest is like a prison that locks in both the truth and the lies. One workaround for that problem is to change the messenger. That's where an alias comes in handy. When you remove the appearance of conflict of interest, it allows others to listen to the evidence without judging." It must not have occurred to him that engaging in sockpuppetry is, almost by definition, adding a real conflict of interest to the discussion.

Advocating child on child murder
In a May 2022 tweet, he suggested a "thought experiment" where it would be legal for children to murder other children that pissed them off.

"If we made it legal for kids to kill their bullies, a lot of problems would go away. We'd create new problems, sure. But how could those new problems be worse? This is a thought experiment, not a recommendation."

However, the idea that this is a "thought experiment" falls apart when one observes that Adams is relying exclusively on argument by assertion and then couching it in barely tenable plausible deniability.

Profiting from tragedy
Just 3 hours after the 2019 Gilroy Garlic festival mass shooting, Adams attempted to profit off of it by trying to sign up witnesses for a cryptocurrency-based app that he co-founded called Whenhub.

Predictions from a stable genius
It goes without saying that a stable genius with a very high IQ, who believes that his thoughts can magically influence the universe, also loves to predict things. After all, as a trained hypnotist (a factoid that Adams will frequently mention on social media and in promotions), Adams is, naturally, the only person on Earth who is qualified to comment on all knowledge known to man. Everyone else is, of course, just brainwashed sheeple.

On March 12, 2020, Adams predicted that before November 3, 2020, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump would contract COVID-19, and one of them would die from it. This prediction failed miserably: Only Trump contracted COVID-19 during this period, and he quickly recovered after a hospitalization.

In June 2020, Adams announced to his readers, "If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year." He added that "Republicans will be hunted". He also tried to connect Joe Biden's name to the Number of the Beast:

Did you know if you took the capital letter J—just imagine the capital letter J in your mind—now think of the next letter in 'Joe.' It's an O. Now just move with your mind the O to the left until it's on top of the J. It's a backward six. Now suppose the next letter is the lowercase E. What does a lowercase E look like if you turn it upside down? Well, it looks like a six. So you've got the J and O together. If you combine them, it looks like a backward six. You've got this lowercase E that looks like an upside-down six, but that's just two sixes. Six​, six wouldn't mean anything, right? But the next letter is capital B for Biden, and capital B is where you hide your six.

He then stated that the "iden" in Biden means identity, so under this totally-not-contrived logic, Biden's real name is "666 Identity". This is on top of other bullshit shoehorning:

Joe Biden is in favor of, what he said, ‘Bringing the light to the darkness.’ What is happening as he’s speaking? As he’s speaking and saying, you know, ‘bringing the light to the darkness,’ cities are actually on fire. California is on fire. So​, if you’re Satan, wouldn’t you expect that Satan would speak in terms which are true but misleading? Meaning that he will bring you the light, but there’s a catch: ​It’s fire, and it’s burning your stuff. That’s exactly what Satan would say if Satan existed.

How many people or entities do you know who prefer to live underground? I can think of Satan living in Hell and—who would be another person who loves to live underground? Could it be basement-dwelling Biden? I only know two people who are famous for living underground. Can you think of even a third one? I don’t think so.

The only question is whether Adams even believes this batshit insane conspiracy or if he is trying to rile up evangelical voters to get them to support Trump. Given his history and the use of some obfuscatory language like "if Satan existed", the latter is likely, which is still scary as it means he knows what he's doing when spreading the nonsense.

Also, in June 2020, perhaps motivated by his previous correct prediction of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Adams attempted to predict who would win the presidential election that year. Adams put "Trump’s odds of winning the election at 100%". He also predicted that "if Trump wins, there will be a second coup attempt". Adams then complained about the "brainwashing (literally) of the political left", who (according to Adams) have been "programmed" by "propaganda outlets" pushing "fake news".

Of course, Joe Biden won the 2020 election in November. Naturally, since Adams, at this point, was thoroughly hypnotized by Trump, Adams' reaction was to completely believe in Trump's election fraud bullshit (even evoking Godwin's Law when coming up with some bizarre election fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter.)

On January 6, 2021, Adams' coup prediction ironically turned out to be half-correct when a ragtag group of Donald Trump supporters attempted a coup to stop Biden's Electoral College win from being certified. The riot's genesis was rhetoric by Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others at a political rally a few hours prior. Adams, however, used his super genius IQ and hypnosis skills to deduce that blaming these people would be an entirely incorrect conclusion, sheeple. Instead, Adams concluded that the blame fell square on... the media. Adams even parroted Donald Trump's authoritarian rhetoric by calling the media the "enemy of the people".

Adams' rebuttal of his RationalWiki page
When directed to his Rationalwiki page on Twitter, Adams handwaved away his well-documented asshattery, claiming it was all taken out of context.