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Comment by Karellen | Hacker News Reader

> if I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great hack to make lots of money, why would I be telling people about it?

Because you understand that the number in your bank account isn't the score of some weird game. Having more money than other people doesn't make you a better person.

If you have enough money to reach your goals - pay your rent, buy food, indulge your hobbies - that's good. If 20 other people also have enough money to reach their goals, that's a world with more happiness in it. That's a better world. So why not tell other people how to make money in the same way you did, and help bring that world about?

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>So why not tell other people how to make money in the same way you did, and help bring that world about?

I think this does happen quite frequently. It's just that the knowledge gets passed through networks, so the most successful people help those who are socially near them (and probably not too different in terms of success and comfort).

This is the whole "insider knowledge" that the article alludes to.

This comment is in no way an endorsement of Scott Adams, I generally do not like him. However, he recently posted something on Twitter that has been a brain worm for me.

>"Success is mostly imitation. We study successful people and then try to imitate what worked."

>"Imagine being Black, learning the history of slavery and racism, and being asked to imitate your oppressors to succeed."

And a followup tweet:

>"The most damaging reframe in American history is that using the universal tools for success is “acting white.” Solve that problem and we’ll have better visibility on the systemic racism that is primarily caused by the teachers unions."

The last tweet is a little confusing. Teacher's unions? Really?

I used to watch Adams' podcast. It would require a lot of context to fully make sense. Suffice to say he thinks teacher's unions are a big component of the problem here and imo the primary value of his comment here could be conveyed if you remove the tail end of that Tweet which puts it on the teacher's unions.

I’m not sure context helps him with his other outbursts.

“Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people,” the 65-year-old author exclaimed. “Just get the (expletive) away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/23/dilberts-scott-adams-...

“The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.”

https://ew.com/article/2011/03/30/dilbert-scott-adams-femini...

Trump is like the founding fathers and Jesus.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dilbert-creator-on-how-trump-i...

There is a bit of coverage in the wiki. He writes a good cartoon but he is radioactive in his views.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams

Terrible people are sometimes capable of saying things worth considering, and it's possible to consider one thing he says without endorsing or accepting other things he's said or even his personal context for the words being considered.

It's difficult to defend a stance like one you're adopting, because of how quick to judge the general public is. They'd never know that someone like Ted Kaczynski actually held a PhD and wrote an interesting essay before committing to his campaign of terror. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski)

It's rather strange that people will choose to wholly dismiss a person based on one thing, without realizing that even "evil" people have more facets than a simple bevel.

Ted killed himself in prison a few months ago. What benefit could society have gained if someone had heard him out and took some measures to help the environment? Most people won't ask that question, because they have the intellectual and philosophical depth of a puddle.

One of the most illuminating things in my life has been discovering what the "bad" and "evil" side of humanity actually thought, instead of the version that the authorities or victors give us.

There's also this modern tendency to assume that whatever you read, you become. So superstitious.

> There's also this modern tendency to assume that whatever you read, you become. So superstitious.

Sure... but there's also a wealth of information out there and filtering out people with known abhorrent views is a decent first pass filter. maybe alex jones or some other neo-nazi dimwit has a few good ideas here and there but why would I subject myself to listening to them(and also enriching them in the process) when I could listen to people that aren't generally awful people?

I think shallow views is a much better first-pass filter than abhorrent views; a sufficiently in-depth abhorrent view can and likely will have components worth taking from, even if their final conclusion is absurd (or just overreaching).

An acceptable-but-shallow view and an abhorrent-but-shallow view are equally worthless; effectively as much value an upvote.

> Ted killed himself in prison a few months ago. What benefit could society have gained if someone had heard him out and took some measures to help the environment? Most people won't ask that question, because they have the intellectual and philosophical depth of a puddle.

Well it's not all that interesting question coz he wasn't exactly first or last preaching same thing about the environment, so there is a plenty of other people to listen to that do not happen to be crazy.

But in general I agree that the trend of disregarding someone's entire contribution to everything they contributed based on this or that opinion that is currently regarded as "bad". After all, if you dig far enough (especially in time, kids/teenagers do/think some utterly dumb stuff) you won't find an innocent soul alive...

Reading Ordinary Men changed how I feel about good and evil.

The thing to understand about Scott Adams is that if he says something that sounds outrageous, he's probably trolling you. He'll in fact describe how to do this in order to generate publicity, or as a mechanism to expose hypocrisy or bad logic. But when he's in the middle of it he'll commit to the bit.

Basically, someone says X, which is crazy, because if X then logically Y would be true and Y is not only wrong but offensive. So he'll publicly assert Y and get people to argue with him, but the only real way to show that Y is wrong is to admit that X is wrong, which was the point.

And then the people arguing with him don't want to do that. They want to be offended by Y without admitting that X is wrong. So he has a bunch of fun with them because they've foreclosed themselves at the outset from winning the debate on the merits.

The thing to understand about this argument is that it is unfalsifiable nonsense. Anything he says that is wrong is him joking, you just can’t tell because he pretends so well! No, dude. He is wrong a lot and like a 5yo, when he realizes he cannot actually defend or explain something he did he falls back on “it was just a joke!”

Of course he's wrong a lot. The point isn't that Y is right, it's that X and Y are both wrong but you can't admit to that if you're a hypocrite.

And the "anything he says that is wrong is him joking" is the idea, because it works both ways. If someone says something which is actually wrong, you can make a convincing argument for why if you're willing to be logically consistent yourself.

But there are also things which are politically offensive yet true, and having a reputation for this kind of trolling is what allows someone to say those things out loud. Because then you make the same claim: "Maybe I'm trolling you, if I am just provide the counterargument."

Which you can't do if the counterargument requires you to admit that X is wrong and you refuse to do that, but you also can't do if there is no counterargument because Y is true.

It doesn't matter whether "is he trolling this time" is falsifiable. What matters is if you can disprove his claim. If you can, go for it. If not, what does that say?

Maybe but "get the hell away from Black people" isn't a "claim"; it's explicit rich white boomer racism.

Adams was looking at a poll that said 47% of black people disagreed with the statement "It’s okay to be white.". If that poll was reliable then that would be a profoundly concerning statistic and evidence of some pretty strong racism on the part of the community surveyed.

The level of "rich white boomer racism" (which is a bit racially charged in itself, but sure we can go with that) really hinges on how credible he found the poll. It was Rassmussen and also a pollster stirring up trouble so realistically he should have just dismissed it as a likely lie by not-reporting-the-real-context of the question being asked (I personally suspect dodgy framing). Adams should have picked up on that since it is his area, but the argument would have been reasonable if he was silly enough to believe the poll.

The African Americans I've known are very in tune to race issues. And the poll question comes off as a racist dog whistle, like an extreme form of "all lives matter". So I wouldn't put a lot of faith the the poll results, certainly not enough to publicly advise avoiding an entire group of people based on their skin color.

> Adams was looking at a poll that said 47% of black people disagreed with the statement "It’s okay to be white.".

The thing about Black culture in America is that it is a product of very strong selective pressures to be aware of messages that carry meanings beyond what is on the surface, and, well, that one has a history:

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/4chan-another-trolling-ca...

If the black community is going to be persuaded by 4chan that "it is ok to be white" is a racist message that just suggests a mis-step by the leadership in the black community. The longer they tilt at the windmill the more silly they'll look.

If somehow that poll is picking up a real opinion then Adams has a point. That sort of racism has no place in modern society, it is acceptable to have any skin colour. And it is acceptable to assert that any skin colour is ok to have.

Which, coincidentally, is exactly the debate dynamic that Adams was likely trying to set up. The slogan is just too inoffensive and reasonable to complain about. The people trying to get worked up about it are just going to look bad.

> If the black community is going to be persuaded by 4chan that "it is ok to be white" is a racist message that just suggests a mis-step by the leadership in

If you read the link, you would know that it was white supremacist phrase before the 4chan thing that saw a massive upswing in actual white supremacist use not following the isolated use of the supposed bait effort during and since the 4chan thing.

Whether the trolling effort was ignorant of and accidentally tapping into and energizing the preexisting racist usage or a knowing effort to leverage and provide cover for it is something that we’ll probably never know, but what we know for sure is that it is not the origin.

If the white supremacists are advocating agreeable and common sense positions then well done to them. They've successfully made a good point. If they claim that the sky is blue or water is wet they will be on similarly safe ground.

Being a white supremacist doesn't mean they are automatically wrong about everything. In this case reality and slogan have, by happy chance, coincided.

> “The point of IOTBW,” explained one Twitter user, “is to bait shitlibs into showing their ass to normies. The beauty is in the simplicity.”

I think the Twitter user in the article has a more accurate position on this. If the black community were fooled by this into thinking that there is something wrong with the slogan, that is on them. I still don't believe they were, it is more likely that the poll was inaccurate.

> Adams should have picked up on that since it is his area, but the argument would have been reasonable if he was silly enough to believe the poll.

This is still in the same format as the above. His claim is that if 47% of black people disagree with the statement "it's okay to be white" then said white people should stay away from them. That's Y. Whether the poll is accurate isn't even the point -- and purposely choosing a poll with an artificially large number could be part of the troll.

X is the belief "it's not okay to be white." Which presumably doesn't actually have a 47% prevalence, but it's also not zero. What he's implying is that if a large proportion of black people actually believed this, his statement would be a completely plausible response from a significant proportion of white people. Which is a bad outcome. So believing X is bad, and increasing the prevalence of the belief X is bad, because if X then Y.

No, it’s not just that he is wrong a lot. It’s that when he is wrong he (and his fans) refuse to actually admit that he is making false claims and poor arguments, and pretends “I was joking!” is some kind of clever escape, and not a sign that nothing he says is worth engaging with. I don’t bother to disprove it when a five year old says “you stink” either, because they also couldn’t care less about the truth and logic of their statement.

A long time ago I reached the conclusion whoever plays "crazy" or "fool" long and consistently enough is in practice crazy/fool. It makes no difference what the person believes inside their mind, if they always play the fool, they are fools.

Scott Adams has been like this for a long time. Trolling or sincere makes no difference, if he acts like a bigot he is one.

Wouldn't that make all satirists bigots? Is Stephen Colbert? Carroll O'Connor? It can't be that the only difference is whether someone is successfully trolled.

No, professional satire by definition doesn't count. In interviews they often tell you their real opinions or how they construct their character. I guess if they always stayed in character and never gave any interviews you could make a case...

You're begging the question re: trolling. You don't know they are trolls; you merely believe so. In fact, there's no way to tell real opinion from flamebait with the people under discussion. That's the whole point: if they always act like fools, they are fools.

> In interviews they often tell you their real opinions or how they construct their character.

But that's exactly what Adams does.

> In fact, there's no way to tell real opinion from flamebait with the people under discussion.

Sure there is. If it's of the form "there is a valid argument against this, but it's inconvenient for partisans to make that argument" then it's flamebait.

I don't think that's the case for Scott Adams. You're giving him too much credit.

There's no way to tell the form you claim is flamebait. You assume it is, but you don't know for sure. If it requires too much assuming, it's indistinguishable in practice for the real thing.

An act that is kept up 24x7 is the real thing as far as I'm concerned.

1. No evidence at all that teacher unions help students. Test scores have gone down drastically all over the country for the last 30 years or so.

2. The teacher unions are against school vouchers, which almost completely eliminates competition in the districts that need it most. A large majority of black families are in favor of school vouchers.

Just a thing I noticed since I don't know Scott Adams etc. — surely being a slave couldn't be considered a success‽

I'm sure I'm missing the meaning here somehow but to me it's quite obvious we may imitate something successful and not imitate something unsuccessful.

The implied theory in the paraphrased quotes is that Black people are not successful in part because they have learned a framing where success requires acting like a slave owner, or acting white. That is, behaviors that correlate with success are tainted with being the way (oppressive) white people act.

This obviously can't be true for African Africans. Even including former colonies.

I think this part clarifies it:

>The most damaging reframe in American history is that using the universal tools for success is “acting white.”

If you are not American it may not be clear. One specific example of a "universal tool for success" being marred in this way is that black kids who are successful academically are sometimes bullied for "acting white." I've intentionally found a left leaning source discussing this phenomenon. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/acting-whi...

My darker friends often caught hell from associating with a 'white boy' like me. The racism problem is bad on the other side too and many people discount this, but it may be a bigger problem than the obverse for culture and progress.

Didn’t even Obama face some of this in his campaign because he wasn’t “black enough”? I think SNL even had a running gag about it.

The quote is talking about emulating the white oppressors, who oppressed people to gain wealth and power.

That's so refreshingly naive a view that I'd almost upvote you for it. Unfortunately it's not how the world works and is overall damaging since it lays the foundation to believing all those ads on youtube in which some guru promises to tell you their secret to success if you only sign up ("for free") on their website to watch their video ("for free"). Next thing you know is your aunt lost most of her savings to paying for seminars in which she was promised to learn how to get successful, but it is all a scam and made her poor.

OP would presume they covered that in their last OR branch:

> or I'm actually stupid and about to see my business model crash and burn

In other words, they wouldn't be able to reach their long term goals because one of the 20 other people are going to eat their lunch. (And all will in fact attempt to monopolize their lunch.)

Oops, I didn’t realize you had made this comment, which is better than mine:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37103107

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