31 thoughts on “Dilbert and free will”

  2. Yes. You have to accept magic to get arrested, and if you’re found to be insane, you have to take medicine to get normal so you can be executed. Hello! It’s called “justice.” Sheesh, Dilbert, keep up would you!

    1. When the majority of people believe such and such the outliers can easily become not only aliens amongst them, but thought of as subversives and every kind of monstrosity they can imagine or create.

  3. ah yes, scott adams
    one old post
    http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/fossils_are_bul.html

    Fossils are Bullshit

    I’ve been trying for years to reconcile my usually-excellent bullshit filter with the idea that evolution is considered a scientific fact. Why does a well-established scientific fact set off my usually-excellent bullshit filter like a five-alarm fire? It’s the fossil record that has been bugging me the most. It looks like bullshit. Smells like bullshit. Tastes like bullshit. Why isn’t it bullshit? All those scientists can’t be wrong.

    If you are new to the Dilbert Blog, I remind you that I don’t believe in Intelligent Design or Creationism or invisible friends of any sort. I just think that evolution looks like a blend of science and bullshit, and have predicted for years that it would be revised in scientific terms in my lifetime. It’s a hunch – nothing more.

    Yesterday I read this article in Newsweek about how DNA testing is being used to show that, well, fossils are bullshit.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17542627/site/newsweek/

    The bottom line is that DNA tests (which do not set off my bullshit detector) have shown that you can’t really tell what set of bones begat other sets of bones just by looking at how they differed and how old they are. Apparently evolution is more complex than imagined, and there were lots of ape-people varieties wandering around at the same time. Some had modern features that they weren’t supposed to have. The so-called modern features apparently popped up and disappeared more than once, and in more than one species.

    My bullshit filter accepts this new information. I was having a hard time with the idea that some goober in tan pants would dig up a bone fragment in Africa and know it was his own (great X 1,000) grandmother. It just didn’t feel right. And now we know, assuming the DNA evidence is solid, that the guy in the tan pants was full of shit. All that the fossils show is that there used to be ape-people who are not us.

    To be fair, there’s still plenty of evidence for evolution. It’s not going away anytime soon. But personally, I’m cautious about any theory that keeps the same conclusion regardless of how many times the evidence for it changes. There was a time when the seemingly straight line of fossil evidence was the primary foundation for the theory. Now it seems that that straight line was like Little Billy from Family Circus finding his way home from the playground. And there was a time when it seemed evolution was probably a fairly continuous and gradual process. Now it seems it happened in bursts, relatively speaking. And there was a time when it seemed that mutations had to give some sort of survival advantage to endure, and now scientists believe that isn’t necessarily true.

    And if this isn’t enough to spike my blog hit count, I should add that the first person to explain that science continuously revises itself — and that’s what makes it so great! — has no free will.

  4. ah scott adams
    not sure what he is getting at here, but he has always been a bit off

    links deleted to see if this gets through

    Fossils are Bullshit

    I’ve been trying for years to reconcile my usually-excellent bullshit filter with the idea that evolution is considered a scientific fact. Why does a well-established scientific fact set off my usually-excellent bullshit filter like a five-alarm fire? It’s the fossil record that has been bugging me the most. It looks like bullshit. Smells like bullshit. Tastes like bullshit. Why isn’t it bullshit? All those scientists can’t be wrong.

    If you are new to the Dilbert Blog, I remind you that I don’t believe in Intelligent Design or Creationism or invisible friends of any sort. I just think that evolution looks like a blend of science and bullshit, and have predicted for years that it would be revised in scientific terms in my lifetime. It’s a hunch – nothing more.

    Yesterday I read this article in Newsweek about how DNA testing is being used to show that, well, fossils are bullshit.

    …

    The bottom line is that DNA tests (which do not set off my bullshit detector) have shown that you can’t really tell what set of bones begat other sets of bones just by looking at how they differed and how old they are. Apparently evolution is more complex than imagined, and there were lots of ape-people varieties wandering around at the same time. Some had modern features that they weren’t supposed to have. The so-called modern features apparently popped up and disappeared more than once, and in more than one species.

    My bullshit filter accepts this new information. I was having a hard time with the idea that some goober in tan pants would dig up a bone fragment in Africa and know it was his own (great X 1,000) grandmother. It just didn’t feel right. And now we know, assuming the DNA evidence is solid, that the guy in the tan pants was full of shit. All that the fossils show is that there used to be ape-people who are not us.

    To be fair, there’s still plenty of evidence for evolution. It’s not going away anytime soon. But personally, I’m cautious about any theory that keeps the same conclusion regardless of how many times the evidence for it changes. There was a time when the seemingly straight line of fossil evidence was the primary foundation for the theory. Now it seems that that straight line was like Little Billy from Family Circus finding his way home from the playground. And there was a time when it seemed evolution was probably a fairly continuous and gradual process. Now it seems it happened in bursts, relatively speaking. And there was a time when it seemed that mutations had to give some sort of survival advantage to endure, and now scientists believe that isn’t necessarily true.

    And if this isn’t enough to spike my blog hit count, I should add that the first person to explain that science continuously revises itself — and that’s what makes it so great! — has no free will.

    1. Sure deducing a possible morphology from a single or several fragments does seem bizarre and hardly believable. But then science is about being a detective, using new information to help the already established, supplant it or be discarded. Educated experts do it, not some “goober” doing it.

      The difference between Evolution as a concept and all the complications and complexities that support it.

      And if this isn’t enough to spike my blog hit count, I should add that the first person to explain that science continuously revises itself — and that’s what makes it so great! — has no free will.

      Your conclusions baffle me here. You are perfectly free to ignore the evidence. Just don’t try to peddle it with the establishment.
      But some do over and over.

      In near static places evolution really doesn’t do much. IN very active places with new pressures can have loads of changes over a short time. (All time being relative.)

      There are simplistic ways of looking at Evolution, just don’t think that is all. Many layers to it.

      There is still more to learn.

      1. Sorry to be confusing, i had splitting headache this morning.
        Those are not my comments, but a post at Scott Adams’ blog. i had to leave out links to get it to go through.
        P Z Myers has had several critical posts on Adams beliefs.

          2. Given Adams grossly deficient understanding of Evolution I find it extremely curious why anyone would put any value on his views on free will.

            I do however find that Adams has an excellent understanding of corporate life and corporate types. I’d say he’d best be sticking to the subject that he actually knows something about.

    2. The knowledge that lots of different ape people evolved and at one time were running around Africa together, and most of those species died out, has been known for a while. I don’t understand why you think this conflicts with evolutionary theory.

    3. It’s actually impressive how, in a perverse way, pretty much every single claim about evolution in the posted piece here is either wrong or at the very least grossly misleading. E.g., when was “the seemingly straight line of fossil evidence” ever “the primary foundation for the theory?”

      Not to mention what I would regard as some very strange ideas about how science works, or how it ought to.

      1. If you could only misattribute some of his money to me 🙁
        it wasn’t clear with links deleted

        1. 😀

          Even with working links I think it would have been ambiguous (and the links do work for me, BTW). I think using blockquotes or even just quote marks would have helped.

          (Or just saying, “I’m pasting that post below:”)

  5. Scott Adams knows free will like he knows corporate life. What would we do without Dilbert to brighten the day?

  6. I’m cool with this strip, but Adams sometimes flashes an ugly reactionary side that occasionally leaks into his comics. (Though that’s no reason not to take our comic strip juste wherever we may find it.)

    2. Yeah, it was disappointing when all that began to come out. Yet still the strip is sometimes brilliant.

      Given his views on women, I’m always surprised but glad that Alice is such a competent toughie. And the pointy-headed boss’s secretary ain’t bad either.

  7. Scott Adams tells it like he sees it, albeit, maybe,in a wizardly way. Communication is wizardly. All forms of communication such as verbal, written,facial expressions convey your ideas and messages to others in the attempt to change them in your direction. Some are better at it than others. Some don’t quite realize that they are being manipulated.

  9. Scott Adams does have some pretty stupid ideas, truth be told, but he does capture the corporate/tech environment very well in his cartoons.

    1. I believe he gets much of the corporate insanity from accounts his readers send him – which he is quite open about, I think.

      cr

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