Scott Adams says he is dying

I struggle to believe a guy who thought gravity was proportional to size, not mass, was all that bright.

omg. That pc of him in that link looks not entirely unlike me.

That sounds like me too. I was considering getting out of IT due to all the
politics involved. Getting paid to do nothing rather than working on a project
because another department hadn’t agreed on a budget etc. Then I was made
redundant - Result !

I like that one. Although i feel like a certain frequency of reorgs is good for a large corporation. It forces a bunch of people to interact with a different part of the corporation, which can help the corporation function better. And it can be a good opportunity to trim some deadwood, in a way that’s much cheaper and less painful than actually firing people.

Hell, if you have a certain SAT score here in the US you can automatically be a Mensa member. Half my university would have qualified, based on their median SAT numbers. It’s not really that impressive a credential. To me it’s as impressive as being in one of those Who’s Who directories.

I read his strip all the time and bought books until I discovered his political leanings. Still, he’s a gifted cartoonist. I should have thought he’d be seeking the best health care that the Elbonians have to offer.

My mom felt that Mensa might be a useful group to join if the other groups you naturally fell into don’t include a lot of smart people. So, if you like puzzles and enjoy sharing that with people, Mensa doesn’t buy you anything if you went to an ivy League school and work in IT. But if you didn’t go to college and work as a plumber, it might give you a fun social outlet.

That doesn’t explain why Scott Adams joined.

Except the garbage man.

But I notice that this character doesn’t appear in the strip in later years.

Bad news. All that money went to their military.

I liked Dilbert. I also liked Candorville. I’m wondering about me now.

Mensa member here; been a member of the Spanish chapter since 1988.

I have to say that, in my experience, Mensa is nuanced. Within it you will find nice people and assholes, in similar proportions to the “general population”. And, indeed, you will find people in there who go around flaunting their Mensa membership and lording their supposed “superiority” over others. But the great majority of us just enjoy the benefits of being a member and don’t announce our membership to all and sundry. We might mention it (operative word: “might”) if it pops up in conversation or if asked directly, but that is not something that happens often.

FWIW, I have to say that I owe a lot to Mensa. Before becoming a member, I was an absolute mess of a misfit. I felt like and really was an outsider, a misunderstood individual, a bitter asshole unable to really live in society.

After getting into Mensa I was suddenly in touch, for the first time in my life, with “weirdos” with whom I could actually talk on a level ground of things and interests that everybody else around me until then could not understand and/or had been dismissing out of hand. Before then I could not fit with anybody; afterwards something “clicked” and allowed me, for the first time in my life, to socialize on a level field.

A bunch of sensitive, kind and nice fellow members actually helped me and “taught” me to socialize, to deal with human society. It was a bit like socializing a feral kitten so he can live among humans. They saved me from a life of bitterness, maladjustment and pain. They saved me from becoming a horrible person. I owe my current (reasonably balanced) personality and sociability to them and to Mensa Spain.

That said, and going into the subject of the thread - I hope that Adams will have an end of life that is reasonably pain-free, and I also hope that he will find the opportunity and be able to reflect on his assholery and how it has negatively impacted people around him.

(Also - it would not surprise me if he was a member of Mensa but not anymore. In my experience, assholes like him do not last long as members. There is always a certain amount of them in Mensa, of course, but they tend to come and go).

I like this.

thank you for sharing this; I’m so glad you found your group! :heart_eyes:

Never go around telling people your I.Q. First, it’s unlikely you have an accurate measure of your I.Q. unless you paid a psychologist who specializes in measuring I.Q. to personally spend several hours giving you a test and scoring it. There are many worthless I.Q. tests on the Internet. Second, nobody cares about your I.Q. unless you are an infant who hasn’t entered kindergarten yet and your parents think that you might be have problems on entering school.

If you find yourself in a job you are bored with because you dropped out of high school and now want something better to work at, get a GED. Then go to a local community college, take the hardest courses there, and get perfect grades. Then go a state university, take the hardest courses there, and get perfect grades. Then go to the best graduate school (or medical school or law school or business school or whatever) that you can get into. Take the hardest courses there and get perfect grades. Apply to the best departments in your subject (or the top hospitals or the top law firms or the top corporations or whatever) and do well, turning out great research or great whatever). Never boast about your I.Q.. The only thing that the people at the place you’re applying to care about is how well you’ve done at the most recent institution you were at.

You can join Mensa if you wish if you want to talk with other people who do interesting intellectual activities. It’s cheaper if you buy some puzzle books and work on them by yourself. There are some very difficult ones. Never boast to people outside of Mensa that you belong to Mensa.

I understand they have an excellent record of treating cancer by standing neck-deep in mud.

Oh wow, that’s great! I’m glad it helped you. I felt similarly about going to Harvard, honestly.

He recently reappeared when he resurrected Dilbert at Dogbert’s request. From a garbage can.

I think it was Adams’s attempt to reboot the strip.

The Straight Dope is all the Mensa I need.

The reality for most people is, if you have high intelligence, you’ll go to a good school, you’ll meet other people of high intelligence, you’ll become a professional, and your peer group will generally be among people of high intelligence, and you can get your nerd fix that way.

I don’t think such an organization is useless in certain contexts, but I think Scott Adams joining Mensa is indicative of his belief that he’s special and everyone around him is an incompetent fool.

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if that had been his intention, given what we know of his personality.

But it also wouldn’t surprise me if it transpired that he had left after a while. As I said, in my experience people like that do not tend to last in the association.

EDITED TO ADD

Christ, I have just read this about him:

“He noted taking ivermectin and fenbendazole to treat the cancer.”

So… he is taking two antiparasitic medications… to treat an aggressive cancer.

And although fenbendazole has been studied as a potentially anti-cancer drug, it has miserable bioavailability in the ways that are needed for it to be actually efficacious against cancer.

This marks him as, if not a cretin, then as someone who might charitably be called “steeped into utter woo”. Christ on a crutch… … … … … … …

(Unless he wants to end it quick and be done with it, but I can imagine better ways of going for that particular result).

All hail King Mensa, in character and true to form to the bitter end. Jesus.

Hey, don’t get Mensa involved in this! We disavow this kind of bullshit! :stuck_out_tongue:

Steve Jobs had some “interesting” ideas about cancer cures too.

Jobs at least had the maturity to admit later that he was wrong, and the public spirit to go out of his way to talk about that mistake hoping to limit others copycatting him.

I wonder if Adams will recant his crackpot ideas about cancer treatment?