Then it became creepy because it anticipated everything that was coming to pass (sometimes the very day, sometimes within a week, we'd have reorgs, discussions with Marketing, trips to our equivalent of Elbonia).
The peak, for me, was when Dogbert was hailed as a cloud guru the week I started leading a cloud transformation project...
Now it's just borderline insane, but still eerily realistic, despite what one might think of Adams himself (I don't think they should be directly associated in some contexts, and it is just a cartoon, not a political essay).
It wouldn't be the first time that 'it's just a joke' got used to be able to get away with some very distasteful politics. I don't think Adams sees it as 'just a cartoon', when placed in context of his other writings (for instance: on twitter) it is clear that he's using Dilbert as a platform for politics.
But with Scott Adams, you can see that this sort of stuff always irked him - look back at Dilbert poking fun at sensitivity training in the 90's - he did have the progressive take of making Asok and Alice as the equally, if not more, competent than their peers(ed: though fraught with presentation errors itself)
Now however, he has taken an approach that is as subtle as a Ben Garrison "comic."
---
[1] https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/127766727657395404...
I found one quote in passing from 2005 - note this in regards his working time frame from 1979 to 1995.
You got an MBA at night a few years later. This should have put you right on track for a boss-type position at the bank. What happened?
Well, one day, my boss called me in, and said they couldn’t promote a white male because there was too much attention on the fact that there was no diversity in senior management. She told me I didn’t have a future with the bank. And so I put my resumé out and went to Pacific Bell. A couple of years later, [Pacific Bell] told me exactly the same thing. And that’s when I started looking at cartooning as an option.
You were placed on a series of doomed projects at Pacific Bell as punishment for mocking a boss’ memo in your cartoons. Did that actually work to your advantage by providing better grist for your cartoon mill?
Well, it certainly made me angry, which is good. There’s a correlation between anger and humour. The angrier you are, the funnier you can be. You can drive things to the next level. But as far as material goes, I didn’t need any special bad projects to give me material – there was plenty.
https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/escape-from-platos-cub...
Given he is the only source for this claim, I dunno what you want or expect me to say.
A lot of them might not have been the best thing to have up at work as they talked about 'evil corporations', slacking off at work, making fun of inept management... but they stayed up.
A short while back, someone complained that the Elbonian strips were a 'racist trope', and down they all went. It happened right about the time when we 'formed a global alliance' with an off-shore consulting firm and displaced over half of our in-house IT staff.
I can't imagine what would happen if the strips in the OP were stuck on the lounge fridge.
Seeing him framed as the audience-identification character suggests things about Adams' shifting viewpoint, I guess?
I've learned just to enjoy things that I find entertainment from and not follow there creators on twitter because that is usually just a recipe for disappointment.
I'd rather avoid drama and division, i'd rather just brush my teeth than worry about what the CEO of my toothpaste brand thinks about politics, yes i'm all for fighting for justice and rights, but i'd rather stick to the issues in front of me.
> ... Dave threatens to report PHB (Pointy-Haired Boss) to the company’s HR department should he misgender the new engineer. It is then implied that Dave has switched preferred pronouns with the intent of catching cohorts in a trap rather than out of any true reflection of self.
There are at least a couple of things wrong with this, in my view. Do you interpret it differently?
I do not consider him to be a nice person, but I have enjoyed Dilbert, quite a bit.
These days, I don't really follow Dilbert, anymore. Adams just got so bad, that I couldn't follow Dilbert, without thinking about his creator.
He will be successful because the Incredibly Online people haven't yet learned the golden rule: don't feed the trolls.
With this article, and these comments, consider him fed.
That particular strip is actually a hilarious joke that is probably lost on people who have never been in the position of being the minority who isn’t meeting expectations for “adding diversity.” It’s not directed to trans people at all, but rather pokes fun at some people’s rigid notions of race (it’s defined by how other people perceive you) in contrast with their fluid notions of gender (it’s defined by how you perceive yourself).
Think of Hollywood: dominated by wealthy and out of touch artists. With very few exceptions, they all publicly express politically correct and safe ideas that ensures they keep making money comfortably.
That's the total opposite of the direction Scott Adams has been going.
Most big actors understand that the more they talk politics, the less bankable they are, and the dollar wins out most of the time.
The reason why Hollywood talks a lot about diversity, inclusion, feminism, gay rights, human rights, etc, is not because everyone in Hollywood independently decided those things were good. Far from it: this is the same town that circled the wagons around Roman Polanski, after all. And their institutions were built on the backs of bright-eyed female actors being drugged up and sexually harassed. They are genetically tainted[0] against social justice.
What happened to make Hollywood care about this is very simple: the people who fought for the rights of the oppressed figured out how to weaponize social ostracism and public shame as a political tool. And this is not the first time this has happened, of course. The 50s saw Congress blatantly purge Hollywood of leftists through ostracism; and there's a whole right-wing strain of cancel culture[1] that rarely gets mentioned. Even deep-rooted tendencies have to bend in the face of external pressure.
Ostracism isn't unique to rich people, of course. It can happen within any social structure[2]. The difference is where people get cancelled. If you've been fired from your job for going on right-wing rants all the time, you go and get another job. If you've been given the national spotlight by becoming Twitter's Villain of the Day, that reputation will stick to you forever. And that latter scenario is way more likely to occur to people who are already well-connected, well-known, and have something to lose.
In other words, famous people tend to seem detached from the rest of us because they are looking down at us from space. In the same way that any one of us might be a little detached from, say, someone growing up in the 1950s.
[0] As in, I am deliberately tarring Hollywood with the genetic fallacy. #NotAllMovieMoguls
[1] Remember when they cancelled the Dixie Chicks for hating the Iraq War?
[2] Which, inevitably, will form into a nested hierarchy of cliques.
I can think of dozens of "liberal comics" that never tried to be funny, that were merely political propaganda in comic form. Most of Ted Rall's work, for example.
What are you talking about? Doonesbury has been a proudly, and heavily, political comic since the 1960s.
What are you talking about? The OP made it clear that it was once funny and then it devolved into partisan preaching that lacked humor entirely. Never once did OP claim it wasn't political in the first place, why would you assume that?
I was never a particularly big Doonesbury fan (I like Pogo), but griping about "liberal comics" seems to follow the general trend of not realizing that your politics have been on the outside of mainstream cartooning for decades.
He won a Pulitzer prize for a contemporary comic about Watergate.
At what point did we loose the ability to make fun of ourselves? The world used to be such a pleasant place.
I definitely know people like this. They believe that the way people should work internally is according to hard, cold logic, and that any sort of deviation from logic is a problem to be addressed with them.
The problem obviously is that people don't work that way, and never will. Not even the people trying to hold others to that standard - they just take their feelings and emotional needs and rationalize them into some logical framework without recognizing that they don't originate from that framework. ...To the extent that they acknowledge these things at all! It's a profound over-investment in classical intelligence, without any investment in emotional intelligence.
> But underneath that is profound loneliness – the kind only a genius in a world full of idiots could possibly understand.
Adams is lonely not because he's a genius, but because he likely drives the people in his life away. See: Above.
I have certainly seen such brilliant and logical people struggle with this. Getting into shouting matches over why the most rational thing to do is to date them and not break up.
I had forgotten about Asok, of course race and ethnicity get even more charged when you get into Indian culture and American corporate culture.
And I also don’t believe in the importance of diversity, there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t mean I’m against diversity nor that I don’t enjoy it.
Who deals with this stuff actually and not in an imagined way? No one is complaining about made up cramps and if they did you would just tell them to file the sick day.
Dilbert used to be easy to identify with but these just don't seem close to reality at all.
it's just that the article author reached the point where he thinks is serious is what Scott Adams.
It's the old "you can joke with anybody, you can joke about everything, you just can't joke about everything with everybody"
[0] https://dilbert.com/strip/2015-07-13 -> talking about owning slaves (and I didn't need to search far, just put a random year )
In reviewing Idiocracy, Salon stated, "Judge's gimlet eye is so ruthless that at times his politics seem to border on South Park libertarianism".[73] A writer for the libertarian magazine Reason seems to agree, comparing King of the Hill to the anti-authoritarian point of view of South Park and The Simpsons, though he calls the show more populist, noting the disdain King of the Hill seems to have for bureaucrats, professionals, and big-box chains.[74]
Still, Judge denies having political messages in his shows, saying in an IGN interview about King of the Hill:[72]
"I try to not let the show get too political. To me, it's more social than political I guess you'd say, because that's funnier. I don't really like political reference humor that much. Although I liked the episode "Hank's Bully" where Hank's talking to the mailman and he says, 'Why would anyone want to lick a stamp that has Bill Clinton on it?' To me that's just like more of a character thing about Hank than it is a political joke or anything. I don't want to do a bunch of stuff about the war, particularly." [Wikipedia]
[0]King of the Hill, Office Space, Beavis and Butthead, Idiocracy, Silicon Valley
Have you seen the new Beavis and Butt-Head movie, it was very much more explicit in making lazy political jokes, albeit mostly for one filler scene.
I think that scene perfectly encapsulates what the poster is talking about. Beavis and Butthead are morons. We laugh at them because they are beyond stupid, they don't understand things in the most comic way possible. So they learn of the concept of white privilege and they take it at face value. They accept the premise and they go on their little rampage because that's what they think it allows them to do. Even though they are wrong. They are a caricature of the entire concept. And everyone can laugh at it.
The left because, to them, it's 'lifting the veil' so to speak. They are taking white privilege to the extreme conclusion. While no one outright acts like that, they feel there's the element of truth to it. The right because, like I said, no one outright acts like that. When Beavis and Butthead get their comeuppance, they can say, "See, even though they are white males, they still can't do whatever they want. There are rules."
The way we engage on the internet is toxic and over time leads to radicalization and violence. We have not provided anyone with outlets to compromise or pathways to understanding. We just live in filter bubbles cursing each other every day for the most minor of offenses. Tech companies have also continually isolated people from healthy community engagement.
These people fixate so much on narrow issues that they totally miss larger cultural trends that refute their apocalyptic fears: Biden won, Eric Adams won, the SF education board was recalled, wokeness/CRT bills passed in many red states, roe v wade overturned, etc etc etc.
Adams is a fucking idiot. Most of the “intellectual dark web” are as well.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Adams
(Of particular note: the "Predictions from a stable genius" where he goes truly off the deep end.)
Meanwhile this friend of mine (whom I still care about a lot, even though our lives have taken different routes) also told me that he'd be gone for Afghanistan for a month or so, his company (the biggest European defence group) was closing up shop there and stuff needed to be taken care of. So, I was receiving "you're in the wrong reality" complaints about my view on vaccine-related stuff from a person whose company is in the business of killing people (because that's the business defence companies are in).
Like I said, there are realities and realities.
As for Afghanistan: that's a mess that has such a complicated history (going back 100+ years if you really dig into it) that someone who is mostly following orders by whoever is in command of that particular group is likely not going to bother reading up on to make up their mind on which side of that particular line they want to stand. Otherwise they wouldn't be in that line of business to begin with.
A highly respected and intelligent individual being delusional and refusing to acknowledge it.
He's playing himself. You can't get canceled as a political cartoonist -- it's normal for them to make a point through extreme, and often very "offensive", situations. That's their job.
Adams has often said nutty things then when there is blow-back falls back on "it was just a joke and some people have no sense of humor," then goes on to say things that indicate that he was serious about it all along. I try to avoid Adams, but the story I remember best is him claiming that he was voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because, "Clinton supporters have convinced me – and here I am being 100% serious – that my safety is at risk if I am seen as supportive of Trump"
He also said in 2020, "If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year." That was just a standalone tweet, not the punchline of some joke. He followed it up with, "Republicans will be hunted."
Some ultra-liberal.
>> This, of course, mirrors an ongoing controversy in certain conservative circles over the use of gender-neutral terms in place of the word ‘woman’ in order to include trans men and non-binary individuals in increasingly pertinent conversations about bodily autonomy.
I think is a terrible strawman.
>> This, of course, mirrors an ongoing controversy in certain gender critical circles over the use of gender-neutral terms in place of the word ‘woman’ in order to maintain women-only spaces.
There you go.
I enjoy his strips and this post made me discover the more controversial ones, which I had missed. Thank you to the author.
Instead, I found myself laughing at all of these comics. Yes, Adams has gone full nutjob, but the restraints of the comic strip format seem to keep his more bizarre views in check.
I can't fathom how HR can justify selective racism without lawsuits galore.
Evidence for this claim would be useful.
If it ran totally counter to experience nobody would care and it wouldn't be funny.
(That's to say, Scott Addams, the comic's author, went deep into la-la-land, and never came back).
Bottom Line Up Front: Progressives should rework their messaging so that it does not highlight and reinforce differences.
If you look at Conservative media criticism of Progressives, you'll see a lot of Anti-Wokeness. Progressives need to understand why this criticism is so effective. Pushing the envelope makes people uncomfortable. There is a very powerful emotional drive to return to a comfortable state, especially when we feel like we are attacked.
Examining the media split of the 2010's, several things come to mind:
1. Directed and funded media pushing a conservative agenda.
2. The Tea Party Movement and Trumpism.
3. The end of shame as an effective tool.
To expand on the end of shame - in the past, people were more likely to change their behavior in order to avoid being called out for prejudice or discrimination. This doesn't work anymore. Another place you can see this is in the reaction to public masking requests. Shame did not work to get people to mask.
Shame is very motivating, but the motivation does not always take the direction intended. If another group is willing to offer cover for beliefs or actions, then individuals will be motivated to join that group instead of being shamed. If you can find something for "ashamed" people to be proud of, they will flock to that banner.
This brings us back to messaging. "Make America Great Again" just sounds like a good message, if you can divorce it from the source. People who are tired of being attacked or shamed may find comfort in that slogan. MAGA does not say anything about race or gender, which is part of why Trump found voters (a relatively small part of his voters) from minority races and women. Trump could not say that white men should be proud of being white (just think of the implications), but he could say that Americans should be proud of being Americans.
----
Now. After all of that, you may have some opinions about me, so let me tell you a little about myself.
I believe that structural inequality, including structural racism and structural sexism, is very real and very damaging.
I believe that individuals should practice anti-racism. I think that anti-racism training that intentionally includes shame is NOT effective or good.
I don't have a strong belief that Progressive politicians are trying to shame white men, but I do see a lot of this shaming in less formal settings, and in communications and training material. Some of it may make sense in context, but it is never good.
I do think that it is natural to feel some shame when we reflect on the past. I don't think we have to live with that every day forever. There needs to be a path to resolution.
It isn't the progressives that are highlighting and reinforcing differences, they are working (hard) to try to reduce those differences, at least in those ways that matter to a great many people. Progressives by definition yearn for progress and those opposed to it will use anything to stop that progress, any excuse is as good as the next. So no matter what progressives will do to their messaging it will never be enough.
> they are working (hard) to try to reduce those differences, at least in those ways that matter to a great many people.
Yes.
> It isn't the progressives that are highlighting and reinforcing differences
It is very easy to misunderstand or "misunderstand" a lot of progressive tools and messaging. Insisting on pronoun checks or insisting on defining someone's race as part of a drive for racial equality by necessity highlights differences. That can feel uncomfortable to anyone. It is easy to exploit that discomfort. I'm not asking for people to stop or minimize things like identifying their pronouns. That should be normal. But ... you can't insist on it. You can't force someone else to go along with it. They have to choose to participate.
Progress happens when individuals decide that it's worth their time and effort to push for equality. If the messaging pushes more people out instead of advancing equality, then the messaging is not good.
Most political messaging is more motivating to people who are already part of the movement (no matter what movement) than to outsiders. The Progressive movement by definition needs to motivate people who are not already aligned with a particular goal.
When Dilbert started, the government wasn't yet training employees how to "interrupt whiteness" [1], or Coca-Cola how to "be less white" [2], or Cigna simply forbidding hiring whites [3], nor did academia require mandatory diversity pledges for new hires and promotions [4]. Dilbert is doing what we are told art is supposed to do - hold a mirror to society. Do you like what you see?
[1] https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-interrupting-whiteness-...
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/coca-cola-facing-backlash-says-less... (Note that in all the "debunkings" of this story, Coca-Cola never claims the presentation wasn't shown by their hired diversity experts as part of its diversity training. Merely that Coca-Cola the company didn't require those specific slides. But the slides are completely in-line with rhetoric championed by diversity experts routinely hired to train employees.)
[3] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cigna-critical-race-...
[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oat...
You use the word "pseudoscience" to describe the training, so it's unlikely that you're receptive to this anecdote, but just wanted to share my perspective. Being cognizant of your flaws is the first step in fixing them. I really don't think some training along the lines of "hey, you might be doing this without noticing" is the worst thing in the world. At worst, you waste 45 minutes you were probably going to spend arguing with people on HN. At best, you might make yourself more enjoyable to work with. To me, it's worth the gamble!
There is certainly stuff under the diversity banner, especially when done primarily with PR/image concerns that reasonable people can object to. But there are also real issues with discrimination, and efforts to address that are a good idea in my opinion.
Fortunately for me my competition are multi-nationals and they all went through the same diversity quota overhaul. I think their management just wanted more compliant cheaper devs. Big companies have a lot of inertia but they got so inefficient that they're now taking forever to come out with new tech. I'm slowly stealing their customers.
I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California. I’m sure people will be eager to show their anecdotes otherwise but I’m not really interested in that.
My manager had director level approval to hold out job openings to women only. They same manager complained that they were sick of “men and Asian women” making up the team. They asked me for resumes but said they only wanted non-male, non-white or LGBTQ resumes. They were recognized as a diversity champion in the company.
Isn't it pretty much by definition (social) conservative?
> Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional social institutions and practices
> In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favour a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary society
> Progressivism is a way of thinking that holds that it is possible through political action for human societies to improve over time. As a political movement, progressivism purports to advance the human condition through social reform based on advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization
You might disagree with the changes being made, but (social) progressives believe they're making them for the betterment of humans. (Social) conservatives want to stop them, (social) reactionaries want to go back to "the good old times" where the woman kept the house etc.
It's pretty much textbook definitions.
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/search-job/?job_id=58317
Perhaps this is legal in Canada; surely not in the U.S.?
Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized.
Despite these rather nasty policies governments and companies have implemented, it hasn't fixed much and just polarized the issue.
And now Dilbert come in targeting harmful and ineffective policies and hitting a lot of innocent people in the crossfire.
Perhaps attacking people in previously marginalized groups is punching down, but attacking HR DEI enforcers is definitely punching up.
Affirmative action is a harmful and ineffective policy, but if you speak out against it, you are racist. I'm not here to argue whether you agree with that or not, just using it as an example of something you simply can't criticize without offending innocent people.
More to the task at hand though- I question if he's even really punching down anymore(or even if this is possible- societal status shouldn't shield you from criticism, and there is a difference between critique and baseless insults).
Anecdotally, one of my friends was interviewing a candidate- and the other person conducting the interview asked a thinly veiled political question. The candidate was rejected because of their stance, or lack thereof on this question. This was acknowledged internally, and embraced, and several meetings ensued until HR got involved and had to tell engineers that no- they couldn't discriminate on the basis of political beliefs. And that being sneaky about it by bringing up controversial tech figures in the community and gauging reactions was not actually legal.
I don't feel like this is true.
The comic where one character identified as "white" isn't punching down at black people. There are no people of color who identify as white. He is punching up at insane corporate rules that make the color of a person's skin important when it comes to hiring: an inherently racist thing.
The comic where a character identifies as a "birthing human" isn't punching down at trans people. It's punching up at corporation rules which need a specific reason on why an employee can go home or not. It shouldn't matter why you're feeling unwell, go home if you're sick.
Corporate policies on its employees should be as broad as possible and not target individual minorities and their intricacies.
This is the corporate culture now. Or at least a caricatured view of it (as it always was).
Not, say, 10:1 PhD student to position ratio. Or exploitation. Or the visa slavery (accept all the crap, or get kicked out of the country you've been toiling for over the course of 10 years). Or $50K/yr being acceptable research professor's salary. Or the disgusting proportion of adjunct positions used as full-time. Or (gasp) actual lack of diversity.
Nooo, it's the statements, which were invented as a non-solution that requires nobody to sacrifice anything, changes nothing, but can be a great taking point.
Same with the industry. Wage stagnation, treating workers as disposable, job conditions — no, it's the diversity efforts that are the problem.
Never mind that diversity is profitable [1], and is pushed by managements for that reason if they have the brains to understand it.
Which Scott Addams, sadly, does not.
If Dilbert is a mirror, it's one that's been covered with poop its maker piled up on it.
No, I don't like what I see. Or smell.
[1]https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
Mckinsey admits it's just a correlation. I don't think it's correct to say diversity is causally linked to increased profit.
Yes, diversity is often considered profitable by corporate executives, but usually for reasons that are not exactly positive, like with Amazon whose analysis was that diversity decreased the chance the employees would unionize.
>Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks
Dilbert comics have lampooned pretty much all of those things.
This sounds a lot like whataboutism or "Fallacy of relative privation":
dismissing an argument or complaint due to what are perceived to be more important problems.
Also, Your characterisation of diversity statements as changing nothing could itself be a problem if there divert from meaningful change; It seems like DEI is very well funded compared to the other issues you raise, if they are funded at all (where are the anti-visa-slavery corporate initiatives?).
> Never mind that diversity is profitable
That's another conversation altogether, but one corrupted by the fact that any other conclusion would be considered heresy e.g. rather than argue that it's true, you assume it's true and imply anyone who disagree is stupid..
They require candidates to show a track record promoting diversity. Merely saying it is not enough, so they do in fact require sacrifices - even if you don't count being forced to profess beliefs you don't hold as a sacrifice. But then forced conversion is also no big deal.
This is required by one fifth of academic jobs, as of 2021: https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...
Dilbert became famous for holding a mirror to corporate culture, and ringing true. Now it is holding a mirror to how the right perceives culture to be. My complaint is that it is 1. Overly concentrating on issues that aren't issues for a large part of the population (I don't list my pronouns, but I don't care a single bit if someone else does, and I will respect their preferences in the same way I will respect that Margaret goes by Lisa since she doesn't like the name she was given).
2. Highlighting issues that just aren't real, i.e. diversity hiring (I have done plenty of hiring at multiple companies in multiple countries, we actively try to get expand the diversity of our APPLICANT pool. Evaluation and job offers are done on the merits. Never seen a diversity quota) What I haven't seen is people being passed over for not being diverse enough on a first hand basis. The people that claim it happened to them, are generally better at complaining than they are at their job.
To put it simply, people think Dilbert has gone off the rails, because they don't recognize the situations being represented as anything close to realistic.
If you'd like more reliable sources, here you go: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 Experimental evidence for favoring hiring women over men in academia https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21565503.2018.14... Strong evidence for preference for hiring minority candidates in academia https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/12/31/life-science-jobs-... (with links to actual documents included revealing clear use of DEI statements to cull huge swaths of applications) https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/minority-professor-deni... How DEI statements are used to discriminate against researchers on grants https://www.thefire.org/fire-calls-on-uc-santa-cruz-to-drop-... More schools using DEI as a first cut in hiring
Maybe this is different in some companies, but from what I understand it seems to be happening at the same pace as well.
How do you have that information? Do you know of multiple people saying they were passed over for not being diverse enough and you have personal knowledge that those people are bad at their jobs?
If that's not the case, then stop offending people you disagree with.
They shared these public record documents with Fox News, which I'm sure you dislike, but they nonetheless count as independent confirmation: https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-chop-segregated-training-...
News sources you like seem simply unmotivated to check this story.
The Coca-Cola story was confirmed by Snopes (read Coca-Cola's statements carefully - they never claim the slides were not shown as part of training, though they make every effort to imply it): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coca-cola-training-less-wh...
I cannot find a good secondary source on the Cigna story, though the alleged facts are an entirely predictable result of diversity hiring goals.
The WSJ Opinion story is confirmed by Berkeley's own report (https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_...). The opinion story itself was written by Professor Abigail Thompson, an American Mathematical Society vice-president, and in her open letter (https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf) she links directly to the requirements on Berkeley's own website: https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...
But isn't it convenient how no "trustworthy" media bothered to report any of these stories, or even any similar stories? Shall we also call them out for giving us such a slanted view of the world?
But at the same time, I don't find Dilbert's take on these issues to be funny, nor do I really think that it's an appropriate place to combat these nuanced issues. 3-panel comic strips are too small to address these topics even in a properly satiric manner.
I wish the comic strip had stuck to its original formula that thrived on simple workplace dysfunctions. Trying to stretch the formula to cover complex political issues feels like it's just attacking strawmen and dismissing actual issues that can (and do) exist in workplaces.
And yet single-panel political cartoons have been doing it well for centuries. Of course they can't encompass all the nuance, 1000-word essays can't either. Cartoons (and essays) provoke discourse and critical thinking.
Or they used to, anyways.
Also, I like "Trying to stretch the formula to cover complex political issues feels like it's just attacking strawmen". So many discussions and debates involve building strawmen and "destroying" them to make one think that "owned" the other.
I don't agree with the point. But a lot of people do - and it's created a sort of conservative counter-culture that is irresistible to many people.
Yes, but overcorrecting but trying to implement equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity is bad as well.
Both can be true.
How does that square with the fact that the homeless and prison populations are mostly men? And men do the most dangerous jobs? And most social programs are aimed at women? And divorce favors women? And men die younger? And women outnumber men in college?
- 90% of homicide victims are male.
- 80% of homeless people are male.
- 90% of people in prison are male.
- 80% of suicide victims are male.
And there are many, many more issues that men face. But I won't even touch on them because you are clearly against discussing them.
Erasing women increases this
That Coca-cola would tell employees to "be less white" is so ridiculous and far fetched, that it simply can't be happening.
Or, if it is happening, it's just some overzealous person whose hot take about "whiteness" just got bad press -- it's isolated to that one event, and certainly not happening across the country.
The effect is that you (and I) begin to look like the crazy ones. And the more we see it happening, the more frenzied we become in trying to warn people, the less they believe us, and the crazier we look.
She looked genuinely stumped.
"How do I know what offends a particular person?" Basic cultural competency will dictate that there are words or stereotypes that are considered offensive to certain people. Outside of that, yes, you will probably make mistakes and aggrieve people from time to time. Again, making an occasional social blunder is a basic part of human relationships. When that happens, listen to why the person is offended. Often they will have real, good reasons that center on them feeling disrespected, and having that disrespect hurt their career or life. Then, apologize sincerely. Then, don't continue making the same mistake, that would be extremely disrespectful. If you wholesale disagree and think the offended person is being trivial or absurd, just don't bring it up or find a new place to work.
EDIT: No, I do not work somewhere that has Elon Musk in a direct or indirect supervisory position, including the board. The manager (whom I don't even report to in the chain) just didn't care for the lack of unconditional praise for Elon Musk in a slack thread.
I see a bunch of material misrepresentations, relying on people to react emotionally to phrases like "anti-white" instead of actually peeking under the covers.
I do not see a reflection of society, except one that's been badly warped by individual and petty grievances.
We should be asking what the hell is up with society.
I listen to his podcast every now and then. The guy's funny, and has a knack for disassembling news into their dark patterns and pointing out absurdity. Definitely not the same guy portrayed in this article.
> [Dramatic pause] And inevitably, this will be what leads to the downfall of Dilbert.
Geez. Drama much? I can almost see the author patting herself on the back when she wrote that sentence. What a waste of a life.