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Notes -
Scott's sort-of obituary for Scott Adams is one of the best things he's written in ages.
He makes a few references to Adams' potentially getting too mentally calcified with age to maintain his contradictory ideals and personas and just lost self-awareness of what parts of the joke he was supposed to be 'in' on, and who was laughing with him vs. at him.
I now do wonder how Scott expects to avoid this particular outcome or if he's accepting it as probably baked in and just wants to make sure he leaves the greatest possible legacy he can, on top of his kids.
Great stuff though. One thing that deflated Adams' image in my mind was when the gorgeous Instagram model he married in 2020 divorced him about two years later. Like, if you're going to advertise as this professional persuasive hypnotist guru... and you can't 'persuade' the young hottie to stick around in your life for more than a couple years, I suggest that your skills are overstated. Indeed, this sure reads like he got hypnotized into a situation by some of the oldest persuasive tools in human history: a woman with an hourglass figure and decent makeup skills.
Think its fair to say that his overall impact has been positive by any utilitarian calculation.
I don't think he ever advertised himself as professional hypnotist. He did advertise himself as trained hypnotist, but that only requires one to pay for a training course and successfully sit through it. And I don't think he ever claimed he uses his training to convince women to sleep with him?
You are saying it like there's anything bad in it. I am a happily married man, but if I weren't, and I were 63, and a hot young lady, which I liked, were willing to live with me, I'd take any time I can get, be it two weeks, two months or two years.
just going to drop into this to note that hypnotism is a real thing with an actual evidence base, at the same time it doesn't really work like people think it does.
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Right, but "take what you can get" is not the ethos he was trying to embody, I think.
"Follow all this advice and read my books and you too might be able to marry a hot single mother for a couple years" is not a massive selling point on its own.
I'm being a tad uncharitable, but I just find it interesting how Adams was able to maintain an image of his prowess that seemingly exceeded the reality of his capabilities.
I just have a larger amount of respect for Bill Watterson, who ALSO published a beloved, wildly popular comic strip. But he ended it while he was on top, disappeared from public life, does whatever it is he enjoys doing, and has eschewed any and all attempts to merchandise or monetize his characters (this appears wiser and wiser every year).
This gets towards Scott's other aside about various intellectuals who he seems to think have beclowned themselves in moving beyond the areas that they achieved their original insights and following.
Knowing when to exit before you crumble your own legacy is a talent very, very few exceptional people have achieved. Scott would like to be one of them, I'm sure.
I don't think he ever used his marriage as a selling point for his books, did he? That said, how many of the 63-year-old geeks who aren't billionaires actually get hot smart model pilot wife, even just for 2 years?
I actually see no problem in that. Nobody owes anybody to be anybody's role model. If a person X is successful at something, and then they want to try something else, and fail miserably, they don't owe Scott or anything to live their lives in a way that would not diminish former success in Scott's or anybody's eyes. If he didn't want to live his "legacy" for the rest of his life, he has full right not to. He was his own man, and did not let anybody else - neither his "legacy", nor anybody else's needs - define what he's doing next. I find that laudable, even if he did not always succeed and sometimes looked ridiculous. That's the price one pays for trying things. It's not for everybody, but I can find no fault in Adams being one of the men who wanted to do that.
In the way that any dude having a hot girl on his arm is using her as a 'selling point' just by showing her off, I'd argue.
I just recall a period of time where she was showing up in his posts with semi-regularity in a kind of "Look at what I got fuckers" context. Can only find this one piece of evidence left, though. Wait, here's another.
Slight disagree, only insofar as someone who actively chooses to convey advice and represent themselves as a person worth emulating... you kind of do owe it to your audience to be very open about failures as well as successes.
Or if you don't care to advertise failure, don't seek the audience.
But that much I will 100% say: he never, ever did grift off his audience. No crypto schemes, no scammy seminars or conferences, no shilling for sketchy brands or gambling sites (that I recall).
(I'm not counting his failed entrepreneurship attempts as scams because part of the reason they failed is he plugged them earnestly.)
What Scott's obituary does seem to acknowledge is that Scott WAS living life on his terms, and there's beauty in that, but he argues he kind of let that get swept away when he got a taste of true 'influence.'
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I presume Adams had to pay her a significant settlement after the divorce. Perhaps the juice was worth the squeeze, but perhaps it wasn't.
Not for us to decide, for sure.
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