What makes it cautionary? From what I can tell, he hardly suffered from what you described. I'm not saying that I agree with everything that came out of Scott's mouth, but I never saw a sign of regret in him in regards to politics.
Well on the health side, he might not quite be Steve Jobs level, but he spent months taking complete nonsense "treatments" where his medical condition (predictably) worsened dramatically. That part's certainly a cautionary tale.
Sure, though I'm not sure why that matters as I am pretty sure we all have some sort of cautionary tale in our lives the further back you dig.
I don't agree that this is a clear-cut example of a cautionary tale. I think for most people it can be a cautionary tale since it's common to chase things that promise hope in a desperate situation. We also shouldn't dismiss that someone can weigh the risks and take a gamble on something working out. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong or stupid for someone trying something conventional even if it backfires.
It's important to try and see this from Scott's perspective. According to him, he had his use of his vocal cords restored by a treatment that was highly experimental and during a time when all the official information said there was no treatment. If we are to believe his words, it worked out for him once, so it makes sense that he would decide to try things that are unconventional when his entire life was at stake.
> If we are to believe his words, it worked out for him once, so it makes sense that he would decide to try things that are unconventional when his entire life was at stake.
In general this is not true, for example if you win the lottery the correct path is not normally to spend all of your money on more lottery tickets.
There are definitely other valid reasons to take unconventional paths though.
Oh yeah, I'm not necessarily saying that it's logically sound, but I do think it's at least understandable. The reason I think that's important is that it's a very human way to respond to experience and especially desperation, thus I find it tremendously unfair that people shit on Scott for that. But maybe this is my bias towards people who are unconventional in their thinking (sans flat-earth and so forth).
On [2] he said that natural immunity from getting covid-19 is better than getting the vaccine alone, which is factually correct, as many studies demonstrated (note: may vary by strains, but was particularly the case in 2021/2022). There's nothing crazy about this, and it's very reasonable to say you prefer to evaluate the risk/benefit and take the vaccine accordingly, instead of mandating this for every demographic.
People tend to fall back on tribalism and slap labels on others instead of engaging with nuance or complexity.
> On [2] he said that natural immunity from getting covid-19 is better than getting the vaccine alone,
He was more on the anti vax side than this statement implies, at least that was my take away from the [2] article:
> For unvaccinated people who got COVID-19 and recovered, he said, "Now you’ve got natural immunity and you’ve got no vaccination in you. Can we all agree that that was the winning path?"
[a]
> better than getting the vaccine alone, which is factually correct
You are not giving a metric here so I can not tell why you think it is better. Everything I have read indicates there are more risks, death or long term complications, with covid-19 exposure before vaccination than the other way around. The conclusion of [2] is similar to this.
The original Scott Adam's post not longer exists, is there another place where he recorded why he believed contacting covid-19 before vaccination was the winning path? Without that the quotes look damning against his view point.
Apparently politifact reached out for comment and did not get any:
> We sent emails to an address listed on Adams’ website and at Dilbert.com and an address on his Facebook page. We didn’t get a reply.
Several 2021–2022 studies, especially Delta-focused, suggested natural immunity provided robust or superior protection against reinfection compared to two-dose vaccination alone.
I read the abstract and conclusion of all three, none of them talk about natural immunity with no vaccination being the "winning path" like Scott Adams did. None of them talk about getting covid before getting vaccinated(maybe only optionally) as a better or safer path, not in the abstract or conclusions at least.
[1] essentially says that there is no value for people who got infected by SARS CoV-2 to get vaccinated:
"our findings suggest that once an individual has fully recovered from initial infection, prior SARS CoV-2 infection protects against subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection and its related negative outcomes. Moreover, the level of effectiveness seemed similar in both the recovered and fully vaccinated cohorts. With a paucity of vaccine doses, this should be one of several aspects that should be considered when deciding whether or not to prioritize vaccination of previously infected adults."
None of that is advise to not take the vaccine and try for natural immunity before getting a vaccination.
In fact the advise here is conditional on "a paucity of vaccine doses" so they may(not clear one way or the other from your quote) recommend vaccines for people who have natural immunity if there were enough vaccines to go around.
"All of the included studies found at least statistical equivalence between the protection of full vaccination and natural immunity; and, three studies found superiority of natural immunity."
> "The anti-vaxxers clearly are the winners at this point, and I think it would probably stay that way," Adams is seen saying in a video clip posted on Instagram. "And I don’t want to put any shade on that, whatsoever; they came out the best."
Please actually read the linked article instead of creating some false narrative about people falling back into tribalism. Additionally, his claim from his quote is predicated on ignoring the fact that someone who has natural immunity from past exposure didn't die. It also overlooks those who may suffer long term side effects from the virus that a vaccine would help avoid.
I don't recall where (Vic Berger?), but someone made a compilation of "regret" clips from Trump influencers (Alex Jones and others, and Scott Adams). This was in the circa January 6 days, where humiliation reigned, and they all felt betrayed because "RINOs" dominated Trump's term, "the deep state" was still standing, and he accomplished nothing of note. It's been memory-holed since then but that was the dominant mood back then (they blamed his mediocrity on "bad staffing", which later led to Project 2025).
Well Scott Adams was in there, venting (in a video) that his life had basically been ruined by his support for Trump, that he'd lost most of his friends and wealth due to it, and that he felt betrayed and felt like a moron for trusting him since it wasn't even worth it. Nothing had changed and the country wasn't "saved".
This video is so badly edited that it’s really difficult to figure out what he’s actually saying. It’s obviously cut to portray some kind of regret, but for example what does “he left me on the table” even mean? Who? How?
Sorry, as other commenter points out, the editing is only “bad” in a specific context. It’s brilliant for purposes of comedy and mockery. It’s definitely not good for purposes of understanding what Adams really thought.
Edit: and for what it’s worth, I have no idea who “Berger” is or that/if they edited that Vice video.
It’s edited well for its purpose, perhaps; it is not edited well for the purpose of understanding the context and intent of the Scott Adams quote being discussed, which is very much not its purpose. From the perspective of someone trying to understand the evolution of Adams’ views, it is badly edited, which is different than saying Berger is a bad editor, or even that it is badly edited from any other perspective.
Well okay, if you could find this compilation then I'd be interested. That really doesn't sound like the Scott Adams I've seen over the course of the last decade.
I’d be interested in seeing this. Not to doubt you, but I suspect a more accurate characterization is not “my life was ruined by my support for Trump” but rather “look what being right about everything gets you in a world of trump haters.”
> Nothing had changed and the country wasn't "saved".
Let's be precise and remove those scare quotes.
In 2015/2016 Trump was literally talking about saving U.S. critical infrastructure:
1. Promising to fulfill a trillion dollar U.S. infrastructure campaign pledge to repair crumbling infrastructure[1]
2. Putting Daniel Slane on the transition team to start the process to draft said trillion dollar infrastructure bill[2]
By 2017 that plan was tabled.
If anyone can find it, I'd love to see Slane's powerpoint and cross-reference his 50 critical projects against what ended up making it into Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
Infrastructure Week was literally a running joke throughout Trump's first term because his staff would start by hyping up some substantive policy changes they wanted to pass, only for it to be completely derailed by yet another ridiculous/stupid/corrupt/insane thing Trump or one of his top people did.
Clearly Trump himself has no interest in these sorts of substantive projects, I mean just look at his second term. He has even less interest in policy this time around and isn't even pretending to push for infrastructure or similar legislation.
My point is he made these claims on the campaign trail, which I cited; he had a real domain expert on his team, which I cited; and it became evident even a year in that his administration wouldn't deliver on that plan according to his own domain expert.
That's a fairly standard case of an ineffective politician casually jettisoning campaign promises once he's in office. And he jettisoned them because he couldn't sell the Republicans on a trillion dollar infrastructure package.
