Scott '”Not as smart as I think I is” Adams strikes again.
Scott Adams' blog makes me happy.
Not because it's well written, thoughtful or any other redeeming quality, it makes me happy because it's my Three Minute hate: It gives me something to be angry about that's not actually important.
I can be angry about so many important subjects, and afterwards, just feel depressed because my blazing righteous fury affected nothing and these terrible events just keep going, smashing everything in front of them.
But Scott Adams? He's just doing comic strips and posting incredibly stupid blog posts. And he knows he’s writing dumb stuff because he’s had so much feedback he’s got a CYA on the top of each post:
Warning: This blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view. It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another. It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions. If you quote from this post or link to it, which you are welcome to do, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
In other words, “If I said something dumb, well it’s your fault for being offended because I didn’t mean it, gawwwd. But if you agree, it’s because I’m smart.”
Today’s example of being a complete doofus: Aspirational Genetics
Adams has come up with this theory that if you lightly torture mice by underfeeding them and dangling food out of reach, they’ll decide to have babies that are tall enough to reach the food. He calls this Aspirational Genetics, because in his tiny world, he’s decided that you can merely decide to alter your DNA.
In other works he’s re-invented Lamarckism, which was based on the assumption that events during a person’s life would be passed on to children - e.g. if a woman was frightened by a rat while pregnant, her child would have rat like features.
And so, like almost every grand idea Adams comes up with we can bust it with a few minutes of Googling and a little rational thought. So in effect, a rational audience can have fun with the topic, if only by enumerating on how un-researched and how little rational thought was put in.
Then you read the comments from people larding on the praise for such brilliant thinking and realise this is the ego-stroke echo-box for Adams and no matter how dim he is, he’s always going to feel brilliant because of his sycophants telling him how marvelous his intellect is - Prompting him to toss out another scrap of delusional maundering and giving us all another recycled concept to mock.