The last tweet is a little confusing. Teacher's unions? Really?
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.
“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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
An acceptable-but-shallow view and an abhorrent-but-shallow view are equally worthless; effectively as much value an upvote.
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...