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May 19, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:35
THANK YOU SCOTT ADAMS!
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Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain and I just wanted to share some thoughts.
I just read today Scott Adams has reported that he has the same kind of cancer, prostate, serious, at least Scott says he's not going to make it, probably past the summer and it spread to his bones and I just wanted to, of course, express my deepest condolences to Scott.
It's actually been quite an important influence in my life.
I got into Dilbert when I was a software entrepreneur and dealing with retarded boards and fairly corrupt salespeople at times.
You know, the massive gap between marketing and tech, as I was both a chief technical officer and a director of marketing.
And his cynicism, his humor, stuff has literally burned into my brain.
Bits from the old Dilbert comics.
They nestle and breed in my brain.
One of Dilbert's presentations which went wrong, and he said, and in conclusion, I hate you all.
Which kind of burnt itself into my brain.
Wally's, well, why would I wash my towels when I come out of the shower?
I'm the cleanest thing in the house.
A towel's supposed to bend.
Just absolutely hilarious, warm-hearted, brilliant, brilliant stuff.
And one of my fun memories with my brother was we were on a business flight and reading Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle.
Just laughing hysterically at what he wrote.
He is an absolute genius and brave.
There was a CEO who invited him to come in and pretend to be a business consultant, and he got a bunch of executives who agreed to a business statement that made absolutely no sense, and Scott Adams put on a wig and a false mustache to make this happen, and that's gumption, man.
That's pretty wild.
That's commitment.
And I did have the good fortune to have a conversation with Scott, I think, twice on this show, which was really an honor, a very deep honor and privilege for me.
And it is the end of an era.
His insights into politics were always staggering.
I used to listen to the morning shows that he did quite a bit.
When I got out of politics, I did not follow them as much, though every time I dipped in, he always had something remarkable and brilliant to say.
When I was young, I thought of all of the people who were older than me, but not by much.
I think he's 67, and I'm...
58. And I remember when I was younger, I thought of all the people who were just a little bit older than me and how I would feel when they got sick and died.
I remember thinking about Sting for some reason.
Sting's in good health.
I think his hearing is messed up, as you can imagine, from such an intergalactic rock star.
And he put a hearing aid in, and then he said, well, I didn't really like hearing what people had to say, so he pulled it out.
He does work with the Hearing Association.
I think I just remember thinking, what's it going to be like when the people a little ahead of me start to die?
And, of course, don't you, don't we all, don't we wonder what it's going to be like when we get that slow shake of the head from the doctor?
What's it going to be like?
When we get that slow shake of the head from the doctor.
Well, Doc, are there any alternatives?
Are there any treatments?
What are my options?
And Scott did try Ivermectin.
He tried some famboozledoozle stuff or whatever it is.
I don't really remember the name.
Because there was little downside, as he points out.
And, you know, why not, right?
Don't we all wonder how?
When we know the ending and its time frame.
Because it's kind of a blur, right?
It's kind of a blur.
It's kind of a pixelated fog out there.
Yes, we could get hit by a bus car crossing the street tomorrow.
Or the last time I took a plane, it was shaking like crazy.
And of course, you just wonder, hey, what if the wings come off?
Or something like that.
And I deeply admire Scott's Resolution and his dignity.
I mean, the man is in, I assume, considerable, if not downright unbearable pain.
He's got arthritis, he's got bad discs in his back, he's got a tumor, and I think they're all kind of concentrated in the same spot.
I've never really had any back pain, but it's really an ugly thing to go through.
It's not even like you're going through it, right?
There are certain health conditions.
You know, for me, it's like software and hardware issues.
So there are certain health conditions that, you know, I don't know, you get a hernia and then you get it fixed.
So then you sort of, hopefully, sort of go back to normal, right?
Then there's other stuff like hearing or whatever that if it fries, it's pretty tough to get fixed and certain conditions is downright impossible.
So that's like a hardware issue, a software issue you can...
Reinstall the OS back to normal.
Hardware issues are kind of fixed and permanent.
And Scott, from what I've seen, has had some significant highs and lows in life, which is kind of what happens when you live life in some reasonable way, trying to maximize your potential.
And Scott, when he was younger, he was working at Pacific Bell, and I think the guy got held up at gunpoint twice in a year or two when he was...
A bank teller and then obviously wanted to move into management and then hit that white male DEI ceiling and was explicitly told that he couldn't progress because of his race and sex, which is all just appalling stuff.
But he would get up at four o 'clock in the morning, casting about and working on various business ideas.
I mean, Scott, he started doing cartoons at the age of six, like I started writing short stories at the age of six, and he would get up at four in the morning before work and just grind.
It paid off for him in terms of wealth and fame.
He was the biggest comic strip in the world for a long time.
I mean, he had a TV show.
The Dilbert stuff was everywhere.
The merchandise was everywhere.
He had the Dilbertitos.
He had a full food line.
He was a restaurateur, but I think lawsuits, if I remember rightly, lawsuits put a stop to that.
I'm sorry if I get anything wrong.
And he was married, and then his stepson later on got addicted to drugs and died of an overdose.
I think it was fentanyl.
I'm just...
You know, highs and lows.
And highs and lows are the inevitable byproduct of a life lived with focus, commitment, and intensity.
And I've read a number of his books, all wonderfully written, incredibly insightful.
You know, he's not a philosopher any more than I'm a cartoonist, but I don't judge non-philosophers' books by philosophical standards.
So, you know, I had a lot of important and powerful stuff to say.
Our metaphysics and epistemology would not accord, but humor is such a deep and delightful spice of life.
and Scott Scott taught the world not to take itself too seriously.
Scott taught the world that competence and management are often complete opposites.
It's called the Peter Principle, like you're promoted one level beyond your level of confidence.
And so you move up until you're bad at your job, and then they don't move you up any further, so you move up one rung past where you're competent.
And he demystified bosses.
He empowered Those who competently do rather than those who incompetently waffle and merely talk was a great gift to the world.
You know, when I was a kid growing up in England, of course, you know, teachers and bosses and managers, I remember the headmaster of my boarding school, like, gods, you couldn't question or evaluate, and how dare you?
And you've just got to fall in line and conform and probably march off to some...
Godforsaken, rat-infested, mud-soaked trench somewhere in France seemed the end result of that kind of authority worship.
And Scott absolutely took an irresistible sledgehammer to the authority of bosses and the authority of experts.
And, you know, humor all the way back I was in King Lear when I was in theatre school, and I was, as most people who read the play or watch the play, are involved with the play, fascinated by the court jester, right?
The court jester, the fool, the only one who can tell the truth.
As the old saying goes, you can tell them the truth, but you have to make them laugh first, otherwise they'll kill you.
And Scott, in the most powerful and positive way, really one of the biggest influences of positive subversion.
I mean, there's negative subversion where, you know, your culture has no history and everything you do is illegitimate and, right, you're all criminals like that.
That's really horrible subversion.
But subversion of the unearned prestige of often accidental authority was something that Scott took a...
acidic flamethrower hatchet to the base of these almost titanic sequoia trees of authority in our society and just hammered them.
And in a fearless, and when I say irresistible, once someone makes you laugh and gives you that dopamine, and I used to, I mean, when I lived in Montreal, I lived in Montreal for four years, two years of theater school and two years of Miguel finishing my undergraduate in history.
And I would get the newspaper every day, and I would read it cover to cover, and I would go first to the Dilbert.
Always first to the Dilbert.
I bought the books, and I just...
I was never a fan of the TV show.
It was a bit too surreal for me, but it's just a matter of taste.
It's not anything here or there.
But he gave me a genuine, deep, and abiding gift.
Which is skepticism of the org chart.
Skepticism of, quote, authority.
Because, I mean, the way that I grew up, it's like, well, everyone who's in charge must know what they're doing.
They must be fantastic at what they're doing.
They must have this immense talent and skill and ability.
And just seeing that chipped away, it was, at least from the British culture that I grew up in, I mean, it was...
It felt almost, not quite criminal.
It felt like a misdemeanor, at best.
And it felt like forbidden, forbidden knowledge, the skepticism of authority.
What's that great Dilbert, where he's saying, you know, like, mouse 50-inch...
CRT monitor.
People who don't need people are the happiest people.
I mean, just brilliant.
I mean...
Because the mirror image of Dilbert and the pointy-haired boss, where the pointy-haired boss is skilled with people and incompetent in technology, and Dilbert is competent in technology and unskilled with people, and that's often the...
The shallow sophist versus the semi-autistic technologist is one of these interlocking things in business that there is no particular solution to, but always seems to be a kind of fascinating coalescence of jigsaw puzzle pieces.
And when Scott moved into politics, my God, I mean, okay, obviously you make a lot of predictions in the world.
I'm more of a free will guy than Scott Adams is.
But nonetheless, there's so many variables.
Even if there wasn't free will, there's way too many variables.
It's like a rock bouncing down a hill.
You can't say where it's going to end up accurately down at the bottom.
You know, it's not going to end up at the top, but where exactly it's going to land.
So he made some predictions, most of which are very good.
I mean, he got Trump because Scott's a trained hypnotist and really deeply understands the power of persuasion.
The persuasion of Dilbert was, it's important to be skeptical of bosses, which is a very valid concern.
It's important to be skeptical of bosses, and it's all important to be skeptical of engineers as well.
And Scott's predictions were so good.
So often.
And his way of, I shouldn't say like it's all past tense, he's still going to keep doing his show and I hope that he lasts long past the summer.
Again, assuming that the pain level, which is considerable for him, he says he has no good days and the evenings are even worse, which is why he stopped doing his evening shows on his locals channel.
But his political analysis, his analysis of cause and effect, his pulling apart of Dominoes of why things happen or why they don't happen or ways to reverse looking at cause and effect was almost second to none.
Almost second to none.
And, you know, also he has muscle issues for decades.
I think in the mid-2000s, mid-early 2000s, he had spasmodic dysphonia.
Is it that?
Where he had to end up with a surgery to reroute.
His vocal cord muscles so that he could speak effectively, and I think he was feeling immense amounts of despair at not being able to talk effectively, and I mean, I talk all the time.
I can completely understand the horror of not being able to communicate and the feeling of being locked inside a silenced, solitary confinement prison of your own skull flesh.
It would be pretty appalling, so I have great sympathy, but he...
He worked hard and he got the right surgery and his voice completely recovered.
And I really do believe that the bitter, acerbic, hilarious fool, I'm not calling him a fool, I'm just saying that the humor in his show is foolish and extreme, but uncovers immense truths.
You know, like if you're...
Cleaning as a stone and you use very high pressure water, right?
I mean, that high pressure water is extreme.
It's not rain.
It's not a bucket.
It's that high pressure and what it uncovers, what it blows away, that high pressure acerbic foolishness uncovered so many essential truths for me and liberated me from the automatic programmed Maybe a little bit.
I think it's more British than American.
This sort of automatic looking at the aristocracy or looking at the sort of the ruling class, the top class.
He just blew all of that away.
And that was really important to me because, and I'm trying not to make this about me at all, but I just want to say the influence that Scott had.
Excuse me, in my life, was when I was raised, how I was raised, was, you know, there was like the ruling class, the smart people, the good people, the brilliant people, the whatever, and then there was like the soldiers, the grunts, the privates, the working class, the drones, the soldiers, the factory workers.
And there was like a gap, like you can't cross.
England's very class-based societies.
You can't cross.
America's much more tumble-dry, but England is.
It's not quite a caste system, but it sure as hell isn't the opposite of a caste system.
And so by reading Dilbert, you know, I went from a junior programmer to a chief technical officer in a matter of months.
And my former mindset, sort of pre-Dilbert, would have been, I can't do that.
I have to go get an MBA.
I have to go.
And I was actually very successful as a chief technical officer.
I interviewed like 1,000 people.
I hired like 100 people.
I managed a lot of people.
I wrote software.
I did R&D.
I traveled to do sales presentations, helped negotiate contracts, and presented to boards.
Because I was just like, there is no magical barrier between the bottom and the top.
There's willpower, dedication, learning, expertise, and commitment.
And, you know, obviously some, you know, intelligence barriers.
And Scott was important to that for me because he removed from me the ceiling, you know, the ceiling of like, well, I mean, clearly if I want to go from junior programmer to chief technical officer, It's going to take 10 years at best, right?
As opposed to, why can't I do it in a couple of months?
Why should I put an artificial limit on my own capacities prior to the evidence that they're limited?
Right?
Why?
Why should I assume that?
And Dilbert and Scott Adams was a massive influence on me.
Why doesn't Dilbert take the pointy-haired boss's job?
Well, because Dilbert is addicted to technology and the same as the pointy-haired boss is addicted to politics and sophistry.
But why not?
You know, in England, when I grew up, there was no path to the top.
I mean, you had to have the right accent, the right context, the right pedigree.
You had to have the right schooling, all of these things.
And there's this gap, this void between the low and the high.
Maybe you could get to the middle class, but you better not go to the high.
And the glorious anarchic chaos and skepticism of the top of the ruling classes, so to speak, that is in Scott Adams' Dilbert's, of course, when it comes to business to a considerable degree, and also in politics and...
You know, as we saw in COVID and in the whole healthcare professional class that got so much unbelievably wrong.
And the permission to just not believe people is something foundational to Dilbert.
And I just...
I don't know if you'll ever see this, Scott, but...
Thank you.
You really did liberate the sewage grates of arrested potential and give me...
Just to mix analogies, a giant catapult to what I was willing to accept I was capable of.
And it was the same thing, you know, I've been running this, you know, I mean, up until a couple of years ago, by far the world's biggest philosophy show, 10 million downloads a month, and it was just, it was massive, right?
100,000 books a month, just huge.
That's part of like, well, I don't have a PhD in philosophy from Harvard or Yale or Princeton or Cambridge or the Sorbonne and so on.
It's like, but why would I limit myself?
Absent evidence, right?
Absent evidence.
You know, I remember trying out to be a singer in a garage band and I'm like, yeah, okay, that's maybe not for me.
I like to sing, but I'm not particularly good at it.
But...
So, absent evidence, yeah.
Evidence, yes.
Limitations, right?
I've never been able to touch my toes.
I would never become a palerina or a dancer.
But I'm willing to accept the evidence of limitation, but where there is no apparent evidence of limitation, why would I accept it a priority?
Why would I say this is my ceiling, this is my top, in the absence of evidence?
You can just do things.
You can just start a philosophy show.
You can just co-found a business and sell to the biggest corporations in the world.
You can just travel to Europe and China and America and all over the place to just sell software.
You can just go and give speeches and presentations at conferences.
You can just go do things if you're committed and if you're willing to learn and grow.
And that's a great gift.
And the last thing I want to say, other than great thanks to Scott for liberating not just mine, but countless people's potential from preconceived limitations and notions and the, I don't know, the prostrate worship of the experts and the bosses of the management classes and the self-perceived gods of the universe who are Wizards behind a curtain.
I wanted to thank you for that, Scott, really.
It's a huge gift.
It's a huge gift to have uncorked people's potential by giving them massive skepticism at the efficacy of experts at the foundation of science.
I think that was Dr. Feynman at the foundation of science's skepticism of expertise.
And boy, did you bring that to life in a way that was so engaging and funny.
But...
This is not to do with Scott.
I just wanted to thank Scott for that and give my absolutely enormous sympathies for the suffering that you're going through.
It's appalling, and I'm so sorry.
But the other thing that I wanted to say, because, I mean, I'm close to 60. Close to 60. Yes, I exercise.
Yes, I keep my weight down.
Yes, I eat well.
Get my sunshine.
But my friends...
Please absorb...
Please absorb this fact.
It's later than you think.
It's later than you think.
Whatever you're going to do that you want to do, that there's evidence you can do, or at least there's no evidence you can't do it, whatever you're going to do, my friends, please, I'm begging you, on my knees, do it.
Ask the girl out.
Ask the guy out.
Start the business.
Move.
Take the trip.
Learn the skill.
It's later than you think.
And there are enormous numbers of people in the world who lull you into a strange kind of bewildered timelessness.
Just timelessness.
And this is particularly true for men.
We don't have the metronome of Menstruation and we don't have the additional signs of aging.
We're kind of like bricks from 20 to 60 and then maybe we fall apart.
I don't know.
We'll see.
But it is later than you think in life.
I used to think middle age was like 50. No.
No.
No.
Middle age is like 37. In terms of your productive years, right?
A lot of people retire in their 60s, right?
Not me, but a lot of people do.
But it's later than you think.
And I think I've always felt a sense of urgency and of time passing.
It's later than you think.
We don't live life from the deathbed back.
We live it from youth onwards.
I remember the first video I ever did was called Live Like You're Dying.
I'll put a link to it below.
And in that video, I said, well, imagine that you're on your deathbed and you could go back to where you are with the health you have and the youth you have and the vitality that you have, which I hope you have.
Or at least it's correctable.
But what would you not give for that?
Or the old question, like if somebody were to offer you...
A hundred million dollars.
You'd say, wow, that's great.
And then you'd say, yes, but you don't get to live tomorrow.
Okay, so living tomorrow, you wouldn't want it, right?
So living tomorrow is worth more than a hundred million dollars.
If you need to lose the weight, just lose the fucking weight.
If you want to get married, make that your sole goal.
Ask.
And do what is necessary.
To get married.
If you want to have kids, don't wait.
Do it now.
It's later than you think.
Because we live life looking backwards for the most part.
And the big wrench in perspective is to live life from your deathbed back.
What will make me happy on my deathbed?
If I got the news that Scott Adams got some months ago, if I got the news That I had a few months to live.
What would be my biggest regrets?
I mean, I talked about very, very controversial issues on my show, which got me cancelled to hell and gone.
I have no regrets.
Because if I had not talked about those essential controversial issues, and things had just gotten worse and worse and worse, I would look back and say, What would have happened if I did?
And that would be, that would gnaw, that would give me regret.
And you can't influence the future for the better without being cursed in the present by the worst among us.
Thank you.
If you imagine that you got, right, the silent head shake of the doctor, What can I do?
What are my options?
You have to get your affairs in order and you have to make peace with your ending.
Okay.
Imagine you get that news tomorrow.
What is left undone?
I guarantee you it's not being a completionist in Diablo or Elden Ring.
When you face the end, all of your former fears evaporate and just leave you with the hard scrabble, bitter sand of regret.
Oh, if I'm going to die, why didn't I ask that girl out?
Oh my God!
If I'm going to die, what was I so scared of?
You are going to die.
You are.
And you'd never know when.
You don't know?
And all of your fears will die with you.
So don't let them dominate you now.
It's later than you think.
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