PZ Myers. 2005 Dec 02. Scott Adams just can't stop typing, I guess. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/scott_adams_just_cant_stop_typing_i_guess/>. Accessed 2008 Aug 29.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, December 02, 2005
Scott Adams just can't stop typing, I guess
I'm still getting tiresome complaints from Dilbert fans—they insist that I just don't understand Scott Adams, he's a humorist, I'm obsessed with him, etc., etc., etc. They don't seem to realize that they're all responding to the same post, and they're all saying the same thing over and over. And now Adams has yet another post on ID, and he's just digging himself deeper.
You'd think that a "humorist" would realize that if a joke falls flat, repeating it half a dozen times more won't rescue it.
His latest iteration takes two different tacks. I'll hit them both up.
1. He suggests that we use Intelligent Design as a bad example—that we should "welcome such a clear model of something that is NOT science". That's fine; we do this all the time, and I have used creationism as an example of how not to do science. It's missing the argument, though. There has never been any restriction on using counterexamples, and no one objects. The issue, though, is that the creationists want to mandate the teaching of Intelligent Design as a legitimate alternative to evolution. This is unjustified, and his suggestion does not address the actual issue.
I would also add that what is specified in curriculum standards is content, not pedagogy; Adams is making a pedagogical suggestion in a debate about content. There's a difference between suggestions about how something should be taught, and what should be taught—teachers are well aware of it, but the difference seems to elude Mr Adams.
2. He has another irrelevant example.
Imagine that lightning suddenly carves into the side of the Washington Monument the words "I am God. I created you. Darwin was a nut." And let's say there are hundreds of witnesses who all have video cameras and capture it from multiple angles…Here’s the question: Should teachers be allowed to tell science students about the lightning messages?
I'll ignore the details (lightning bolts leaving jokey messages would make me suspicious that it isn't a god at all) and consider just the principle: an unambiguous and naturally unexplainable manifestion of a deity. The answer to his question is easy. Yes. We should have lots of discussions about it.
His hypothetical is painfully irrelevant, however, and what damns Adams is that he doesn't seem to realize it. Intelligent Design creationists have presented NO EVIDENCE for their assumed designer. None. This situation is not at all comparable to what the IDists offer because they have not presented the video tape or the photographs of the markings on the monument.
Here's a question for Adams: Imagine that some people wearing tinfoil hats announce that they have received extraterrestrial communications explaining that the Blorgs of Neptune were responsible for our creation. They have photos of spaceships (that look remarkably like blurry pie plates) and a medium who goes into trances and speaks with the voice of Humpharumphoo, leader of the Blorgs.
Should the Blorg theory of human origins be required instruction in all high school biology courses?
Would it be acceptable if they also pretentiously declared that there are technical difficulties in the unguided synthesis of guanine under certain atmospheric conditions, using lots of technical jargon? Does Mr Adams believe that phenomena incompletely explained by chemistry are sufficient evidence for Blorgism?
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looks to me like someone did some reading and is trying to save face and doing a rather poor job of it.
#: Posted by on 12/02 at 06:26 PM
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Nope, I think this is getting funnier. I think he's trying to demonstrate how much he despises his own audience. Imagine how hilarious he finds it when they take him seriously as they write comments like a herd of mindless, but strangely literate, sheep. He's even added the thunderingly obvious clue about it being the Dogbert way.
Intelligent Design part IV will probably just read "Anyone who comments on this thread agreeing with me is an irredeemable fool - please add your assent below".
It's an interesting experiment. How moronic do his statements have to be before his fanbase realise they're the joke? -
I see your point but there are scads of people who believe they have already seen at least one of these "unambiguous and naturally unexplainable manifestion(s) of a deity".
And if they haven't seen one personally, they are more than willing to accept 2nd hand reports from one of their fellow parishioners.
What you repeatedly (I've only seen this blog for a week or two so maybe I overstate this) underestimate is these apparitions are as real to the true believers as anything we brew up in a lab is real to us.
How do you convince someone otherwise who believes with every pore of their existence that their closet door is Jesus incarnate?
http://www.nbc17.com/news/4323640/detail.html#
I don't claim to have the answer yet myself other than to kind of instinctually understand that it's probably better to learn more about the enemy before dismissing him as a matter of protocol.#: Posted by Fearless Leader on 12/02 at 06:34 PM -
How do you convince someone otherwise who believes with every pore of their existence that their closet door is Jesus incarnate?
Or who accepts a face-like image in their door as proof of Jesus' existence? I mean, they are presenting something as evidence ...#: Posted by on 12/02 at 06:57 PM - I don't get the joke, seriously. Is there one to get? I'd appreciate having it explained to me why Scott Adams is being funny, here. Sounds to me like he's just being an idiot. Is that the joke? "Haha! You thought I was being an idiot, but I was only PRETENDING to be an idiot! Haha, ha! ha! You were fooled, thus demonstrating that YOU are the idiot!" That's... not funny. An absurdist parody of an idiot would be funny. A down-to-the-bolts-replica of an idiot is not.
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Imagine that lightning suddenly carves into the side of the Washington Monument the words "I am God. I created you. Darwin was a nut."
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"I am God, I created you?"
This just shows what a pathetic imagination Scott has, just in case that wasn't clear from his unbelievably lame comic strip whose expiration date passed at least five years ago.
When I bring up stupid hypotheticals like this I try to have fun with them, like PZ does.
Why are IDiots so unimaginative????#: Posted by on 12/02 at 08:18 PM -
You're obsessed with him? How long has it been since you said anything about Adams?
It's Adams' fans who are obsessed with you. -
Scott Adams just can't stop typing
Well that at least would be something you ought to understand, having it in common if your set of responses to one of those previous blog chain-meme thingies was anything to go by (something to do with the words burning and the clowns coming to get you).
I think you are really objecting to the curriculum content of his typing though, rather than the pedagogical methodology behind how (or even why) he does it.#: Posted by on 12/02 at 08:47 PM -
lightning bolts leaving jokey messages would make me suspicious that it isn't a god at all
Now, that's your problem, PZ. Your atheism has blinded you to the existence of a god who is obviously a practical joker (and a rather sadistic one, at that). We're ants under the magnifying glass, and he's the sun.#: Posted by on 12/02 at 09:09 PM -
What kind of argument is Adams offering? What sense does it make to offer ID in the science classroom, even if it's to poke it full of holes and demonstrate was science is not?
Are we next going to introduce Pig Latin into English class so we can similarly, and with finality, explain what the English language is not?
Weird. -
Who let you in on the Blorg? I thought it was only me and a few other guys that knew....
#: Posted by on 12/02 at 10:12 PM
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I have decided to go with the Pig Latin theory. I now believe, yes, it should be taught in all English classes. English grammar, after all, cannot explain all possible sentences. For example:
"Whaa... no... bugger it!"
Therefore Intelligent Pig Latin is the only possible explanation. Please note that this does not imply any particular Pig was involved. It could be any Intelligent Pig. -
Stop it! You're making it hard for me to enjoy Dilbert every day, and I work for the company that pretty much invented the modern cubicle!
Of course, I recall that in one of Mr. Adam's Dilbert books, he predicted that evolution would be proven false sometime in the future. No kidding. I think it was in his first book.
Fortunately for me and for Mr. Adams, a comic about corporate life is pretty much self- perpetuating. HAHAHAHAHA the intern is smarter than me! Oh, the pain...
did -
PZ, you're being too subtle for Scott Adams, why don't you straightforwardly make your point?
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Re. the lightning carved message- I think a more plausible scenario is, what if millions of people marched around the Washington monument carrying placards saying "Scott Adams is an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about", and thousands of scientists joined the demonstration, and issued a statement saying "Scott Adams is an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about", and this happened again and again over the course of several weeks. If that were to happen, would teachers in public schools be allowed to tell their students that Scott Adams is an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about, and would he finally stop digging that hole?
#: Posted by on 12/03 at 07:55 AM
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#51813: did — 12/03 at 01:07 AM
Stop it! You're making it hard for me to enjoy Dilbert every day...
You're still at it? His book The Dilbert Principle (1996) wasn't enough to put you off? All the cartoons in that book were repeats from the newspaper comic strips, and some cartoons were repeated within the book. The entire book just screamed 'phoned in from the beach'.#: Posted by on 12/03 at 09:05 AM - I don't know what Adams thinks "cognitive dissonance" means, but he sure goes on about it. Pot vs kettle?
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Cognitive dissonance and Adams - isn't that to continue to read and enjoy Dilbert though we now have come to believe Adams is a rather incompetent author and thinker?
#: Posted by on 12/03 at 11:26 AM
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"I am God. I created you. Darwin was a nut."
OK, let's say it really is God. Darwin died over a century ago, so I assume by now he is A) forgiven,
B) roasting in hell (like a nut, get it?) Either way, it's not very big of God to be calling him a "nut". But then, what else is new?
"I would expect scientists to welcome such a clear model of something that is NOT science, as an example of exactly that."
Oh yeah, because there is really such a shortage of stuff that is not science. But come to think of it, I would expect the US to welcome a theocracy in Iraq as a clear model of something that is NOT a democracy. That should work wonders in teaching democracy to the rest of the Middle East! Not? -
Oh, boy. So can we expect more server problems when the TrollFather's minions arrive?
#: Posted by on 12/03 at 11:48 AM
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"Imagine that lightning suddenly carves into the side of the Washington Monument the words "I am God. I created you. Darwin was a nut." And let's say there are hundreds of witnesses who all have video cameras and capture it from multiple angles…Here’s the question: Should teachers be allowed to tell science students about the lightning messages?"
What's fucking sad is that people would try to force this David Copperfield embarrassment in science class. How credulous are people like Adams who enjoin us to give up everything we know everytime someone spots Mother Mary in a taco?
This reminds me of the SJ Gould Simpsons episode with the Wal*Mart angel prank?#: Posted by on 12/03 at 03:19 PM -
Here's a question for Adams: Imagine that some people wearing tinfoil hats announce that they have received extraterrestrial communications explaining that the Blorgs of Neptune were responsible for our creation. They have photos of spaceships (that look remarkably like blurry pie plates) and a medium who goes into trances and speaks with the voice of Humpharumphoo, leader of the Blorgs.
Should the Blorg theory of human origins be required instruction in all high school biology courses?
Of course not. Now, if they instead recieved communications about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, that would be another matter altogether, a horse of a different color, so to speak. Why haven't you mentioned the FSM recently? It's seems like weeks,* if not months, have elapsed -- a veritable eternity in blog years -- since you have made reference to Our Lord, creator of all creation, the FSM. On you knees, sinner!
*A quick google search suggests I can't really get away with using the plural (i.e., weeks) here, but it sure seems long.#: Posted by on 12/03 at 04:18 PM -
#51844: Jason Blundy — 12/03 at 11:48 AM
Oh, boy. So can we expect more server problems when the TrollFather's minions arrive?
Not until Monday. Most of them probably log in from their cubicles using their employer's equipment and bandwidth.#: Posted by on 12/03 at 04:59 PM -
Why haven't you mentioned the FSM recently?
Hasn't anyone let you in one the secret code words to avoid persecution? It is safe to assume that when a blogger uses the words "squid" or "calamari", that he is really talking about FSM.
If you doubt the existence of intolerance by the ruling Christian majority, <a href="http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=115153">here's an excerpt from a recent article about the national "Christmas" tree:
Powerful conservative preacher Jerry Falwell threw his support last week behind Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based group that has threatened to sue any city or school district that attempts to secularize Christmas. In a Herald interview, the group’s top lawyer singled out Boston for calling its official conifer a “holiday tree.” And the tree’s own donor, a Nova Scotia lumberjack, said he would have fed the 36-year-old white spruce to the wood chipper if had he known it would be misnamed.
That's the spirit of the season!#: Posted by on 12/03 at 05:06 PM -
Hey, I usually read this blog using my employer's bandwdith and equipment. Dilbert, too, now that I think about it, but just not that often.
It's kind of sad to see, really. I will admit that I still find a lot of his material funny, albeit not when he's dealing with science. I just don't find him all that compelling any more.
This shouldn't be interpreted as sour grapes by a scientist, since I'm a sys admin (currently cursing my job, I might add).#: Posted by on 12/03 at 09:17 PM -
This shouldn't be interpreted as sour grapes by a scientist, since I'm a sys admin (currently cursing my job, I might add).
You say you read Pharyngula at work, and you posted this on a Saturday. I conclude that a) something broke while you were on call, and b) it was bad enough that you couldn't fix it remotely. You have my sympathy.
Did the magic smoke escape from the router or something? -
Ah, but, he is funny. You are not.
Any scientist who engages in this argument is no scientist.
Any Christian who engages in this argument is no Christian.
Don't we all have better things to do?#: Posted by on 12/04 at 10:53 AM -
"Ah, but, he is funny. You are not."
You are a riot.
"Any scientist who engages in this argument is no scientist."
Without logic.
"Any Christian who engages in this argument is no Christian."
Without compassion.
"Don't we all have better things to do?"
Writing rethorical questions you should answer yourself.
But what do I know, maybe you are trying to pull our leg? Like Adams says he was doing.#: Posted by on 12/04 at 02:16 PM -
He suggests that we use Intelligent Design as a bad example—that we should "welcome such a clear model of something that is NOT science". That's fine; we do this all the time
Even when he agrees with you.. Have you read anything by William Dembski? Here is how he handles adversity.
In those programs, Stewart & Co. had some lines that were not only funny but also memorable. The one that sticks out poked fun at ID: “We’re not saying that the designer is God, just someone with the same skill-set.”
You don't hear bile from him. It's sad that you can't be more like him. You discredit your cause, sir.#: Posted by on 12/04 at 04:59 PM -
I see your point but there are scads of people who believe they have already seen at least one of these "unambiguous and naturally unexplainable manifestion(s) of a deity".
And if they haven't seen one personally, they are more than willing to accept 2nd hand reports from one of their fellow parishioners.
-Fearlessleader
The pain, the PAIN of it all! Dude! Fearless Leader! The question of whether or not personal revelation is 'true' or not has NOTHING to do with science! Science is about the material, not the spiritual world, and is about deriving material explanations for material phenomena, testing those explanations, and accepting the ones that work as useful explanations. We know, for instance, that seratonin leads to happy thoughts. We know that this is due to the interaction bewteen the chemical and your brain's receptors. That's science. What isn't science is the question of 'why' such a thing as seratonin should exist - 'why' in this sense, is a purely human construct, it has nothing to with the material world, and is properly the realm of theology and philosophy. It is entirely possible that God created the universe so as to result in evolutionary change - in fact, it fits pretty well with Newton's 'watch-maker' God - but it cannot be proven through science, in fact it cannot be proven at all. It is a matter of FAITH! It's a real measure of how little faith these creationists and ID proponents have in thier religion that they think Darwin is a threat.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 02:20 PM -
Interesting coining of the phrase "Dilbert Mob" in this group.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.comics.strips/browse_thread/thread/2f19d87cd1de2f58/253e7127384b2154?q=dilbert+mob&#: Posted by on 12/05 at 04:27 PM -
You seem to have a lot - a LOT - of trouble understanding that Scott Adams isn't arguing ANYTHING about the merits of ID or evolution. He's just talking about how the debate looks to a layman. That's it. Instead of hitting him over the head for making arguments he never did, you should take the opportunity to explain, in simple language, the debate and why you hold your point of view. Instead, you chose to come off like an arrogant jerk. Nice going. I'm sure you're lots of fun at a cocktail party.
#: Posted by on 12/07 at 10:53 PM
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"I know this is kind of complicated stuff for you guys. If you need more hand-holding, let me know."
It's not my hand that needs holding...
#: Posted by on 12/18 at 10:32 PM -
You're wasting your time, nutheads :x. If you seriously think refuting comments famous people have made will make you an instant star, you're pretty lame. It's a VIEW POINT. Just because you think you're soooo knowledgeble with your evolution theory doesn't mean you have to be all tightas*ed and try to force this on everyone else. Go try to tell this to scientists and people who actually CARE, instead of surfing the net looking for famous people's blogs and then typing up a huge list of facts against it. That's just like purposely looking for improperly spelled words or misplaced periods for brownie points.
Stop trying to act big because nobody really cares and whether God made us or didn't won't affect our lives. I can copy and paste the exact same things that Scott Adams wrote verbatim onto my blog and the most i'll get out of people is "I have a different view but you are entitled to your own." But nooooooooo Scott Adams can't have his own view. Now Scott Adams is a wally, Scott Adams is an idiot, I used to like Scott Adams but now that I found out he is an IDist (god forbid) and doesn't know every fact of the known universe I don't like his comic anymore. Blah blah blah.
Ok? I'm not supporting Scott Adams, I'm not being his pet dog. You're just so pathetic that you disgust me, that's all (and I don't need to look up big words to prove that).#: Posted by on 12/20 at 01:29 AM