And there's no solution. Nothing you can do, say, or not do or say will help. Even just listening will be perceived, after the umpteenth time, as condescending; and voicing your opinion is obviously a no go. It's lose-lose.
> Why should I hire a dedicated writer if I have people with better understanding of the system?
Many engineers are terrible at documentation, not just because they find it boring or cannot put it into words (that's the part an LLM could actually help with) but because they cannot tell what to document, what is unneeded detail, how best to address the target audience (or what is the profile of the target audience to begin with; something you can tell an LLM but which it cannot find on its own), etc, etc. The Fine Article goes into these nuances; it's the whole point of it.
> "Write a manual for air travel for someone who never flew. Cover topics like buying a ticket, preparing for travel, getting to airport, doing things in the airport, etc"
Air travel is a well-known thing, surely different from your bespoke product.
But also, the effects of some things on developing children are different (arguably more impactful) than on adults.
We talk about education, nurturing, etc, and how vital they are to children. We also know drugs that have different effects on children than on adults.
Why then it's so surprising social platforms could also have a bigger impact on children?
There are plenty of rules parents set for children that do not apply to the parents.
Likewise, there are drugs pediatricians won't prescribe for children under a certain age because they have different effects on developing children vs adults.
We treat people differently based on age for lots of valid reasons.
> but Leia's slave costume is something giving off pretty bad vibes from today's viewpoint.
No, it doesn't give bad vibes. It was a sexy actress wearing a skimpy outfit for a couple of scenes in the whole goddamn trilogy! And she kicked butt.
Repeat after me: sexy scenes in movies are ok. And young Carrie Fisher was hot, and that was also ok. I was half in love with her when I first watched Star Wars.
Now, you can ask why Mark Hamill or Harrison Ford weren't put in skimpy outfits and whether it was more often women who got those scenes, and that'd be pertinent. But this doesn't give slave Leia a bad vibe.
It's OK if those scenes had sexy vibes. Sexy vibes aren't bad. This didn't define Leia either, she was mostly competent and kicked imperial butt.
> Also Carrie Fisher looks really hot in that outfit and most of the audience is likely to be adolescent boys and men.
Well said. It feels really weird to have to defend this in this day and age.
It's ok for a hot actress to be dressed in a skimpy outfit. It was a big deal for our young selves when we watched her. Leia also ends up kicking butt (or kicking Hutt) and it's not like she's underdressed or incompetent in the movies.
This is driving me nuts, people making a big deal out of the slave Leia costume. The only person who had a right to complain was Carrie Fisher -- and she did, because it was an uncomfortable costume.
It's ok to have sexy accesses in sexy outfits. It's not ok if those are the only roles they get, but this wasn't the case.
But where does this self-indulgent excuse ends? You can argue BLM itself got radicalized into extreme positions by the radicalized mistreatment of black people, and so on.
At some point, if Scott Adams behaved like a bigot, we should stop making excuses for him. Becoming "radicalized" through life's hardships is not an excuse, unless we also grant this excuse to BLM et al. Otherwise it's selective slack-cutting.
But surely the history and treatment of black people in the US is at the root of it all, rather than "the radicalized left"?
Cop violence against black suspects because of violent crime by blacks seems a very suspect explanation. It ignores how the US got to that situation. Also, cops aren't in the same category as criminals (well, non-criminal cops anyway) and should be held to higher standards. They should de-escalate, not be another factor in violence.
It seems to me it's a spiral of violence in which the cops sometimes play a role in making it worse, and in any case, it makes the excuses for Scott Adams' views very weak in my opinion. So we should cut Scott Adams' some slack because he was "radicalized" by the "hysterical reaction of the left", but not acknowledge the reasons for BLM's existence or anything even before that?
> But surely the history and treatment of black people in the US is at the root of it all, rather than "the radicalized left"?
At some point people have to stop blaming whites from hundreds of years ago and start looking at the consequences current policies and individual choices. This cop violence problem is really only a thing in high-crime areas.
> It ignores how the US got to that situation
Yes, by very lenient with violent criminals.
> Also, cops aren't in the same category as criminals (well, non-criminal cops anyway) and should be held to higher standards. They should de-escalate, not be another factor in violence.
They try that. Suspects refuse to cooperate and results are predictable.
> So we should cut Scott Adams' some slack because he was "radicalized" by the "hysterical reaction of the left", but not acknowledge the reasons for BLM's existence or anything even before that?
There's nothing radical about peacefully disengaging with people who think your mere existance is a bad thing. BLM on the other hand is mostly an attempt to make crime worse by weakening police forces, which again, would mostly hurt black people.
> This cop violence problem is really only a thing in high-crime areas.
All around the world, and all through recorded history the same thing can be seen.
It's more of an interconnected feedback loop.
Distrusted minority areas are over-policed with excess force, more charges are laid (even if actual crime rates are on par with majority less policed areas), people that are over policed act up and push back, reported crime increases.
In the recent history of the USofA there are even examples of state munfactured crime - the CIA famously raised money for off book weapons to foreign fighters by buying cocaine and selling in bulk in minority parts of the USofA.
50% of murderers are black and most of their victims are other blacks. Pretending like the violent crime problem in minority areas is made up only hurts those communities.
As does a reductionist attitude that normalises over policing and it's knock on consequences reducing a complex issue created by social policy not of a communities making.
> At some point people have to stop blaming whites from hundreds of years ago
Why? And how is blaming "the hysterical reaction of the left" doing that?
It seems all you're doing is simply stopping at the point of analysis you find palatable, which is dishonest.
> [the US got to the current violent situation] by very lenient with violent criminals.
Bullshit. Your opinion lacks any depth or explanatory power. No serious analysis would stop here.
> [cops try to de-escalate]. Suspects refuse to cooperate and results are predictable.
Reality shows otherwise. There's reason there has been increasing backlash against police violence, and it's not "the hysterical left".
> There's nothing radical about peacefully disengaging with people who think your mere existance is a bad thing. BLM on the other hand is mostly an attempt to make crime worse by weakening police forces, which again, would mostly hurt black people.
This doesn't address what I said, ignores the original comment (that Scott Adams had become radicalized, not even the OP dismissed this) and is generally a dishonest comment.
All this shows is that you have right-wing views about policing, but explains nothing and ignores the reality of how we got there.
> Why? And how is blaming "the hysterical reaction of the left" doing that?
Leftists pushing the idea that all good aspects of western culture are white supremacy and must be dismantled would be a factor, yes.
> Bullshit. Your opinion lacks any depth or explanatory power. No serious analysis would stop here.
Crime rates in minority areas prove it.
> Reality shows otherwise. There's reason there has been increasing backlash against police violence, and it's not "the hysterical left".
The increased backlash responds to increased profitability. Just look at how much BLM leaders cash in. Most police shooting victims are white, yet there's not talk about it anywhere.
That's a Smithsonian museum, not some abode of radical leftism. That display from 2020 has been removed, and it any case it was listing aspects & assumptions of white culture in the US, not necessarily saying they are wrong. Through your ideological lens, you're predisposed to see everything in that list as something "the radical left" (or blacks, whatever) considers evil, but that's incorrect.
If anything, this display erred on the side of attributing too much to "white culture" which isn't a fair assessment of the contributions of other cultures. E.g. scientific thought, rationality, politeness, self-reliance are all good traits attributed exclusively to white culture, which is questionable.
The display didn't state these were things to dismantle; that's just your right-wing mindset assuming things. You're echoing the talking points of MAGA at this point...
> Leftists pushing the idea that all good aspects of western culture are white supremacy and must be dismantled would be a factor, yes.
Nah, "leftists" (people, really) are reacting to a pre-existing problem. Plus you built a strawman there, nobody said "all good aspects of western culture are white supremacy", unless you consider cop brutality "a good aspect".
> Crime rates in minority areas prove it.
Nah, crime rates in marginalized eras don't prove what you claim, and neither do they justify cop violence.
> The increased backlash responds to increased profitability. Just look at how much BLM leaders cash in.
No. You are just fixated on your favorite boogie man, while decrying cops and racism being singled out by "the radical left". The "BLM leaders" are irrelevant -- this is a decentralized rallying cry against police brutality, not a hierarchical organization -- what matters is the outcry on people who reacted to police brutality. You are grasping at straws anyway, anyone on HN can see that arguing about funding has nothing to do with whether protesting police brutality is a just cause.
> Most police shooting victims are white
Your stats show police shooting victims are NOT primarily white. I think you meant "blacks aren't the majority", but that's not the winning argument you think it is: nobody said cops are exclusively prejudiced against blacks. Also, shooting is not the only way the police exerts violence and discrimination.
Finally, your link supports the fact police brutality is a problem in the US.
> [Scott Adams] wasn't [radicalized]. That's just leftist hysteria and willfull character assassination.
The comment I was replying to argued Adams was radicalized, but blamed the hysterical left. It pays to read the conversation before jumping in.
> unless you consider cop brutality "a good aspect".
No, I was referring to cooperating with law enforcement authorities instead of antagonizing them at every possible chance. How many victims of police shootings could have avoided that fate by simply peacefully cooperating with the officers involved?
> Nah, crime rates in marginalized eras don't prove what you claim, and neither do they justify cop violence.
They do.
> No. You are just fixated on your favorite boogie man, while decrying cops and racism being singled out by "the radical left". The "BLM leaders" are irrelevant -- this is a decentralized rallying cry against police brutality, not a hierarchical organization -- what matters is the outcry on people who reacted to police brutality. You are grasping at straws anyway, anyone on HN can see that arguing about funding has nothing to do with whether protesting police brutality is a just cause.
Not all police shootings are police brutality. In fact, I'd argue most are perfectly justified by suspects refusing to follow orders.
> Your stats show police shooting victims are NOT primarily white. I think you meant "blacks aren't the majority", but that's not the winning argument you think it is: nobody said cops are exclusively prejudiced against blacks. Also, shooting is not the only way the police exerts violence and discrimination.
I prefer to rely on hard data than on paranoid conspiracy theories.
> Finally, your link supports the fact police brutality is a problem in the US.
More palatable to blame the cops than the suspects who needlesly refuse to cooperate.
> The comment I was replying to argued Adams was radicalized, but blamed the hysterical left. It pays to read the conversation before jumping in.
I read the comment. I disagree with the characterization.
> No, I was referring to cooperating with law enforcement authorities instead of antagonizing them at every possible chance.
That's not "a good aspect of Western culture". Non-Western culture also has law enforcement.
"Antagonizing" is the crux of the problem: with racial profiling and excessive policing of minorities, it's the police who's antagonizing. If you put people with guns and a predisposition against minorities in constant contact and friction will them, things will happen.
In any case, "antagonizing" law enforcement doesn't warrant execution or use of deadly force, at least not in a democracy.
> They do.
No, they don't.
> Not all police shootings are police brutality. In fact, I'd argue most are perfectly justified by suspects refusing to follow orders.
The link you provided specifically mentions police brutality, I guess you should have paid closer attention.
"Refusing to follow orders" seldom warrants shooting. Maybe in a dictatorship.
> I prefer to rely on hard data than on paranoid conspiracy theories.
You actually don't. The "hard data" you provided shows white people are NOT the primary victims of police shooting.
Also you're fixated on a conspiracy theory about BLM's leaders yadda yadda, when the reality is that this was a public outcry about police brutality. That's the hard data you ignore because your ideology is fixated on the "radical left" boogiemen.
> More palatable to blame the cops than the suspects who needlesly refuse to cooperate.
Non sequitur. Also, it's what your link states, I guess you should have paid closer attention.
> I read the comment. I disagree with the characterization.
Nah. I don't see your answer to that comment. I think you misread it, much like you misread the stats link you referenced.
Your overall opinion might be true, but it's also unfair to competent people who treat it like their day job, and do it competently (but maybe without being amazing).
There is a place for this kind of people, among which I count myself nowadays -- I used to be way nerdier, learning new programming languages and embarking on projects just because, until life got in the way, my interests shifted, etc.
> I think intellectual curiosity and being a 9-5 person are inversely correlated, again in my experience.
I think this is objectively false. I've seen plenty of terrible coworkers -- terrible at their jobs, that is -- who I later found to have hobbies they were passionate about. One was an excellent standup comedian in her spare time. Another did lots of sports and took them seriously. They just weren't very good at software, and they also "phoned it in". One was essentially a "used car salesman" personality, I'm sure he would have excelled at selling used cars! But his code was awful, and he was very combative towards the rest of the team during code reviews, resisted testing his stuff in any way, shape or form, etc. A friend of mine is a middling developer (not bad, but he's the first to admit he's average), but is an awesome guy, funny, and also an outstanding magician.
Were there early signs? I don't know of them, but to be honest, I mostly "knew" him through Dilbert. When he turned out to be a bigot it was a disappointing surprise to me.
I remember reading (I think in newspaper interview) in the late 1990s his own description of how comics became his full-time focus and his deep resentment of how difficult it had been to advance in management in corporate America because he was a White man in the 1980s (!?!) was pretty central to it.
To add, he also said elsewhere that he didn't like his job and was phoning it in and focusing increasingly on his art. He thought he was passed over because of his gender for a promotion... When he was openly phoning it in and writing comics about how his work culture sucked. Why would you promote someone with their foot out the door and who was badly misaligned with the organization? One or the other maybe (someone who doesn't like the work culture might be a good pick to improve it) but both? Why would you even be upset about it when your art is blowing up and going full time on it is clearly the right move?
Similarly he felt his TV show was cancelled after two seasons because it wasn't PC, but his show wasn't getting good viewership and had a terrible time slot. That's a pretty typical trajectory for a TV show, it's like complaining your startup failed.
He wrote a lot about explicitly magical thinking. Sort of along the lines of The Secret; that he could achieve things where the odds were against him through sheer force of will and wishing. That's not necessarily a problem but it does set you up for denial when things don't always go your way. And the denial is dangerous.
The later chapters of his life were marked by tragedy. His stepson died of overdose. His marriage collapsed. He lost the ability to speak and had to fight like hell to get a proper diagnosis and treatment (he later recovered). He went through COVID like the rest of us. Unfortunately these events would seem to have hardened and radicalized him.
I think we can understand and empathize with that without condoning it. I hope he found his peace in the end.
> He was directly told that he won't be promoted because he was a white man.
Even if that was true (I don't believe his allegation), that's just _one company_. He obviously considered himself a very intelligent and capable person, so it seems the obvious next step would be to go work basically anywhere else? The Dilbert comics never seemed to push the ideal of company loyalty, so I don't think he felt trapped by obligation there.
One only needs to look at the upper management and board of any fortune 500 to disprove the idea that only non-white women are getting promoted.
To put it simply, I do not believe his recounting of events. I think that he convinced himself that was the case, but the conversation did not actually happen as he remembers it.
I understand this might be unpopular, but I’ve been told exactly this… directly, to my face, on multiple occasions. The last time it happened, I asked for it in writing. Unsurprisingly, that request went nowhere.
Whether it happened to Adams specifically, I can’t say. But I can state with absolute certainty that this happens, because it’s happened to me repeatedly. Either it’s more widespread than people want to acknowledge, or I’m unusually unlucky.
And yes, it’s a radicalising experience. It’s taken considerable effort and time to regain my equilibrium when discussing these topics.
Could you share more about the context? When? For what position? In what sort of organization?
Personally the only time this has happened to me was when I applied to be a bartender and was told there was a quota for men and women and they had recently hired a man. And I just let that one go, partly because it was a lark and not a career move, partly because I could see the logic in it and chalked it up to the inherent seediness of the enterprise, and partly because my identity had opened a lot of doors for me in the past ("you look like Mark Zuckerberg" was a comment I got when I was hired at my first startup, in a sequence of compliments about my qualifications) so I wasn't bothered by it closing one.
I'm open to hearing other experiences though. I'm reserving judgment until I understand the context.
and, cards on the table, I will not redact company names because I don't really see the point, these are my experiences not rumours.
Here's two, there's one more but it's a bit too awkward to type out on my phone;
Elastic: there were two Lead SRE positions open, I was recommended to apply, so I applied (friend still works there). I passed the interviews and was offered the job, the other job was filled by someone internal; they rescinded the job offer after having a candidate who was just as qualified but was female. I was offered a position under her. I would have been happy to take the lower position if I hadn't been offered the other one (and accepted) and if it hadn't been on the stated basis that it was because they wanted a woman and that's why, nothing about personality, culture fit, approach or even skill fit.
Ubisoft Massive: I applied for an Architect position (a promotion), I was told that I need not bother applying as the position was only going to be filled when we found someone with a non-white ethnic background, and preferably a girl. This was not long after being told by HR that "my next hire had better be a woman" after hiring a 45+ year old white Swedish guy, so I should have known.
--
For balance; I'll say that my ethnicity has helped me too once, I got a job at Nokia partially because I was natively English speaking, so it's all swings and roundabouts.
I don't know what to think of that but I believe you and find that behavior unacceptable. I think the way to improve inclusivity in the workplace is by casting a wider net so that you get applications from people you otherwise wouldn't (not to the exclusion of other applicants), not to change the hiring decision. Like how Roosevelt said he wanted a "square deal" meaning the deck is not stacked while leaving it to the individual to play their hand.
What makes his story unbelievable is that it happened in corporate America in the 1980s (that you have a different experience in 2020s Sweden is not really a counterexample to what makes his story hard to believe) combined with the fact that he is a famously unreliable narrator. He has previously offered conflicting narratives about similar scenarios, changing the story to be about race only in his later years.
Sure, that's why I can't say for sure if it actually happened or not.
People are not readily able to believe my experiences either (though, the political narrative is opening up to the potential for sympathy? I'm not sure).
These policies come in waves. The 90s in the UK was very "PC" as we'd say. I don't necessarily believe that all diversity initiatives happened in the 2010's and onwards.
That said, you're totally right nobody can truly know except him and who he spoke to. A sibling commenter mentioned that it could be a mealy mouthed middle manager trying to ascribe blame to $women for his own decisions; which I totally buy, even for my own scenarios to be honest with you.
> That said, you're totally right nobody can truly know except him and who he spoke to.
Let me be clear about this, I would definitely assume it did not happen without really strong evidence of the contrary. Based on my assessment of his character and the details of his story.
Assuming anything else is giving him way too much credit, and the effect of giving benefit of the doubt here is likely allowing a known racist to spread a false narrative that is based on lies and engineered to sow discontent.
I don’t see what’s wrong about either of these examples.
If diversity is your goal, and you have two equally skilled applicants of different sexes, you should choose the under represented applicant. Elastic made the right choice.
Likewise at Ubisoft, if you don’t explicitly make room for diversity at the top level of the company then you’re never going to get to an equitable state.
I disagree with the premise that these were acceptable decisions.
The Elastic situation wasn't "two equally skilled applicants". I'd already been offered and had accepted the position. Rescinding an accepted offer because another candidate better fits demographic targets is materially different from choosing between two candidates at the offer stage.
On the broader point: I understand the goal of achieving equitable outcomes. The question is whether the ends justify the means. Explicitly excluding individuals from opportunities based on immutable characteristics, whether in the 1960s or today, remains discrimination, regardless of which direction it flows.
If we're serious about equity, we need solutions that don't require accepting discrimination as a necessary tool. Lowering barriers to entry, addressing bias in evaluation, expanding candidate pools, mentorship programmes: these grow the pie rather than just redistributing the slices.
The moment you tell someone "you're qualified, but you're the wrong demographic," you've created exactly the kind of experience that radicalises people. I've experienced it. It's corrosive, regardless of how noble the underlying intent.
Sure, elastic handled that poorly, rescinding an offer like that is very unprofessional, but that’s an indictment of their HR department and has nothing to do with the gender of the other candidate.
I understand where you’re coming from, what you’re asking for is a gradual transition to equity. But until that transition is done, you’re also asking the groups that were systematically discriminated against to endure the effects of that discrimination for longer. And those soft approaches you listed take a looooong time to work, and only while the pie is getting larger.
At one of my previous companies they took those soft approaches. The result was that entry level positions were very equitable, but the higher the seniority the higher the percentage of white men. At the rate that the company was hiring and promoting, it would take 150 years to achieve equity at all levels.
To be clear, that means asking women to wait 150 years before they have a fair shot at leadership positions.
But that was all before 2020. After layoffs hit and the growth stopped the equity transition also stopped because the white dudes at the top weren’t willing to step down so women could take their place.
You say being discriminated against is corrosive, but what about the corrosion that already happened because of all the discrimination that happened up until now? Are you going to do something about it? Or are you just gonna tell the people corroded to deal with it?
I appreciate the acknowledgement about Elastic’s handling.
On the timeline argument: I’m sceptical of extrapolating current rates to 150-year predictions. Organisations change through leadership turnover, market pressure, and cultural shifts that don’t follow linear projections. But I take your point that gradualism has costs for those waiting.
Here’s where we differ: I don’t accept that we must choose between “discrimination now” and “discrimination for 150 years.” That’s a false binary. The solutions I mentioned aren’t just soft approaches; they’re structural changes that can accelerate equity without requiring us to accept discrimination as policy.
Your point about white men at the top not stepping down cuts both ways. If the existing leadership won’t make space voluntarily, and you implement demographic quotas, you’ve just created a system where different qualified people are blocked. People like me, who didn’t benefit from the original discrimination but are now paying for it.
I grew up in generational poverty. As far back as records go, my family has never held money or power. The people you’re describing as beneficiaries of historical privilege might share my demographic category, but we share nothing else. Class gets erased in these conversations, and that erasure makes the solutions less effective, not more.
What about the corrosion that’s already happened? I think about it constantly. But I don’t believe the answer is to corrode more people in the opposite direction and call it justice. That’s how you get radicalisation and backlash, not equity.
I don’t even disagree with you about class, but to deal with that we need to deal with capitalism itself, which I’ve given up on at this point.
So if this is the system we’re stuck with, and it’s an unfair system, then let’s at least make sure it’s equitably unfair.
The goal is not to make sure the most qualified person gets the job. I actually think evaluating others fairly is impossible so that’s an impossible goal.
Sorry if you feel that you got the short end of the stick. I got it too. Someone has to.
You’re arguing we should take turns being discriminated against because fixing the system is too hard. I’d rather actually try to reduce the total amount of discrimination instead of just spinning the wheel to see whose turn it is to lose.
“Someone has to get the short end” isn’t wisdom: it’s defeatism, and toxic at that.
The issue is not “discrimination is happening”. The issue is that systematic discrimination has biased outcomes and under represented certain demographics, and that needs to be addressed.
Discrimination against individuals is not a problem.
“Discrimination against individuals is not a problem” is quite possibly the most dystopian sentence I’ve read on HN.
I’m one of those individuals. So are the women and minorities you claim to be helping. We’re not statistical abstractions to be shuffled around in service of demographic targets.
If your solution to systematic discrimination requires you to declare that discriminating against individuals doesn’t matter, you’ve lost the plot entirely.
I can say the same thing at you. If your solution to large demographics experiencing systematic discrimination over decades leading to worse outcomes is to tell them that from now on it’ll be different but that all the disadvantages they experienced will not be dealt with then you’re either insane, or trying to disguise your bias.
No you haven’t. You’ve offered platitudes. “I think about it all the time” ok, what are you actually going to do about it?
The grow the pie approaches you mentioned only works while the pie is growing, and we’ve had layoffs for the past 2 years. What is your solution now that the pie isn’t getting bigger?
It sure sounds like your solution is telling people to wait 150 years and hope the problem solves itself.
When growth stops, you focus on evaluation bias and institutional barriers. Blind resume screening, structured interviews with standardised criteria, expanding recruiting beyond homogeneous networks, addressing sponsorship patterns in promotions. None of these require growth.
None require discriminating against anyone.
But here's the thing: I'm not the one who needs to justify my position. You're asking me, someone who's been explicitly discriminated against multiple times, to solve systemic inequality for you, whilst simultaneously defending discrimination against individuals as acceptable policy.
I've spent two decades becoming exceptionally good at what I do. I ensure fairness in my own decisions. I can't fix capitalism or rewrite history, and it's absurd to demand I present a complete solution to systemic inequality before I'm allowed to object to being told I'm the wrong demographic for jobs I've earned.
Your position is that discrimination is fine as long as it's against the right people. Mine is that discrimination is wrong. One of us is being a hypocrite here, and it's not me.
You want the injustices to remain unaddressed, and the people affected to wait longer until they are because you never got to benefit from discrimination and now it’s your turn.
I don’t expect you to solve everything, I expect you not to get in the way of the solution.
If racism against white men is common place why are white men still over-represented in most corporations and especially at the c-suite level? Do you think there should be even more white men in those positions? That seems to me like you're arguing in favor of more racism, not less.
I think people should be selected for roles based on merit, not skin color. If that results in more or less people of any given demographic in any given role I'm fine with it - provided that they got there through merit.
Management, especially upper management, of large American companies is predominantly white men. Always has been. It was even more so back when Adams was supposedly suffering from this discrimination than it is today.
Any claim that racism against white men is common has to reconcile this fact. If the system is so biased against them, how do they end up so incredibly overrepresented? Are they so much better than everyone else that they get most of the spots despite this unjust discrimination? Or maybe the bias actually goes the other way.
I 100% believe that he was told this by at least one higher-level White male manager in corporate America in the 1980s who would rather his anger at being passed over were directed at women, minorities, and an amorphous conspiracy than the individual decision-maker making the decision to pass him over, and who knew him well enough to know that he would both uncritically accept the description of a bright-line violation of his legal rights that fit his existing biases while also not taking any action to vindicate those same rights.
You write beautifully. I decided to click on your other comments and found the same. Rare combination of high-density, high-impact vocabulary, and yet high-clarity.
> He was directly told that he won't be promoted because he was a white man.
I think Adams was lying. I don't think they ever told him that.
For instance in contemporary interviews about his show being cancelled he gave reasonable explanations. Only later did he claim his show was cancelled unjustly. He also wrote a book with the subtitle, Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter. I think as his views hardened he didn't feel obligated to tell the truth, and/or that his lies were in service of a deeper truth.
So I think he sincerely believed he had been passed over because of he was a man, but that that conversation never took place and he knew it.
> If I remember correctly, it had more to do with his sex and not his race.
You're right. I've updated the comment. Thanks for the correction.
Hell, he could have been told that he wasn't promoted because of his sex/race/whatever by his direct superior who supported Adams' promotion but was overruled by his higher ups/the committee.
"Older white guy boss tells younger white guy Adams that he doesn't have a future because the company is only promoting <slurs> and <slurs>." is something I would totally believe happened. Source: if you're a white guy, other white guys tell you all sorts of things you'd think they'd keep to themselves.
>I am sure it wasn't only the words that convinced Scott Adams, but the observed reality of who is being promoted and who is not.
Humans regularly misinterpret reality. It's why as a species we couldn't figure out jack shit until we started removing ourselves as arbiter of truth.
We are terrible at evaluating information and making conclusions.
My dad is pissed at a company for passing him over because "They only hire gay people in management" and not because.... he doesn't have an MBA and the people they hired do. Or that he doesn't know how to do anything more than low level management in general. Or that he is bad at big picture planning.
Nope, definitely the gays and this woke DEI.
My brother spent most of his life livid at "affirmative action" and seemingly blaming it for his limitations. Rather than blaming the fact that he did drugs instead of leveraging his intelligence to do well in school, dropped out of community college for no reason, and has never even applied to a real institution of higher learning or attempted to educate himself.
Some people just suck at recognizing their faults and make up boogeymen to blame.
Imagine your dad not understanding that he was not promoted despite witnessing that people with MBA were promoted, that people without MBA were not promoted, as well as BEING DIRECTLY TOLD that this is the reason.
You are in this exact situation regarding Scott Adams' experience. Sure, what you say is theoretically possible, but very unlikely. I suggest we use Occam's razor.
There was nothing of the modern taboo on discussing this during the 80s and 90s. White man were more or less free to complain, not that anyone would listen, but complaining was still acceptable.
Oh, oof. But also ... huh. Not that I'm steeped in dilbert lore, but wasn't the the main villain was a stupid balding white manager guy? Dunno if he's an unreliable narrator or was just smart enough to keep the white supremacy out the comics at first.
> Not that I'm steeped in dilbert lore, but wasn't the the main villain was a stupid balding white manager guy?
I'd bet dollars to donuts that (if there is truth at all to him being told what he claims) the superiors making the promotion decisions so that told him he was being passed over because he was a White men were also White men. If he had to justify it, he might say that PHB also became a manager before the wave of political correctness.
I had one of his books from ages ago and it had a long bit on the end about affirmations and his weird views on quantum physics and the ability of human mind to manipulate them.
I read his blog every now and then. He was cheering and celebrating the technical aspects of Trump's manipulative language... with no regard for its impact.
It’s one thing to, say, acknowledge and respect the cleverness of a villain succeeding by pulling a trick and then deconstruct the trick.
It’s a totally different thing when you go beyond mere respect/acknowledgement and start incessantly praising the villain’s cleverness, professing your love for the villain, worshipping the villain, publicly fantasizing about having hot sex with the villain, etc.
Adams at first was vaguely alluding to do the first thing, but testing the waters showed him which side of the sandwich was buttered, and he went fully with the second.
He was always a contrarian. Sometime around 2007-2008, he had a humorous blog post that (IMO rightfully) questioned the US's narrative on Iran and nuclear weapons. He had to backpedal very quickly after it blew up.
The lines were spoken by a man who imagined that he was a woman.
Therefore, I think the comic strip was intended rather about how men can have a skewed perception of women.
The "people acknowledge my existence, people hold the door for me" is not about them being idiots. It's Scott arguing that women have it easy compared to men (which may or may not be true, feminists will disagree).
I suspect this tendency is not correlated to political leaning in any way, and the suggestion that it is says more about how you want to perceive people of a particular leaning than anything about them.
I don't recall any of his rightwing stuff, but I remember one of his 90s books had some stuff at the end about how quantum physics meant you could control reality by envisioning what you want and then you'd enter the universe with it. I was a teen and remember being utterly baffled.
That's basically the premise of the book "The Secret", which ironically destroyed the lives of a few friends of mine for a few years before they snapped out of it.
The original Wing Commander brings back memories! I remember being amazed by the graphics and the story.
These days I cannot stand games with cliched storyline and tend to skip the cutscenes, but back then it all seemed so amazing... like a cross between a movie and a game.
I remember playing it later and running into speed issues too, but usually there was a way to tweak the emulator in order to fix this.
And there's no solution. Nothing you can do, say, or not do or say will help. Even just listening will be perceived, after the umpteenth time, as condescending; and voicing your opinion is obviously a no go. It's lose-lose.
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