The minimum recognition Scott Adams deserves should be having updated the world model of those who read his blog.

It is hard to remember how thoroughly Trump's presidential run was seen as a joke in 2015. I bet most people can't remember and somehow think they always knew Trump stood a real chance. That is likely a lie.

Scott made specific, reasoned, unique arguments about why Trump would win, with high conviction. This was at a time when it was about as non-consensus and unpopular as possible to do so (it wasn't just that people didn't want Trump to win, there was a complete dismissal of the possibility from both sides of the aisle).

The fact that Scott was right, and continued to be right when forecasting much about politics, taught me a lot about the nature of the world we live in. Scott clearly understood something important that I did not at the time.

There's a saying in investing that a lot of analysts get famous for being right "once in a row."

Same question to you: did you read his blog and arguments in detail?

Genuine question: did you read his blog and arguments in detail?

Not OC, but:

> Adams wrote about the incident (indirect link, via the Metatalk thread). He wrote that he makes contrarian predictions as calculated bets that in the unlikely event they pan out, he would get credit. [0]

Also to add - from Adams’ wiki[1], there are more examples of a bunch of bold contrarian takes that never became true.

I see you fulfilled one of his dreams and credited to him one of the guesses.

[0] from another comment in this thread, exposing how Adams was praising himself from third character.

Link to comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46604240

Direct link from comment to source: https://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Scott_Adams,_plannedchaos

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams?wprov=sfti1#Politi...

I agree with you trymas! I myself spent time cataloguing a number of his predictions that did not come true.

I am still asking a specific question: for the prediction of Trump's rise, did the critics downvoting me read his actual writing and arguments? It was not a single contrarian prediction. It was an extended, thoughtful, and informed perspective that has helped understand the world for the past 10 years.

Further, he didn't just make multiple contrarian predictions in the hope he'd be credited -- he had a way of making predictions in ways that could be interpreted multiple ways later.

I both (A) found this infuriating and (B) found his understanding of what Trump is to be deeply insightful.

I agree. There’s another guy (in the quote tweet) here who’s pushed on Where’s Waldo stuff, but like you I think it’s currently stuck at the “deformed bodies/faces” issue: https://x.com/kamens/status/2001396716654727607

I also suspect it may be solvable by switching to something other than humans - we probably won’t be as weirded out by malformed cars or plants or whatever.

The hard way solves this for me / I still get to vibe as much as I want: https://kamens.com/blog/code-with-ai-the-hard-way

This is the best compromise for coding with LLMs I’ve seen!

On an old sitcom a teenager decides to cheat on an exam by writing all the answers on the soles of his shoes. But he accidentally learns the material through the act of writing it out.

Similarly, the human will maintain a grasp of all the code and catch issues early, by the mechanical act of typing it all out.

You just reminded me about my math teacher letting us use programs on our TI-83 to cheat on the test if we could type the programs in ourselves. Definitely worked

I love this TODO approach not just for what it does for future readers as Sophie notes but also for the mental release it gives me when thinking about edge cases that I don't want to commit to fixing.

PS Hi Sophie!

Hi!

Personally, I follow the simple rule: "I type every single character myself. The AI/agent/etc offers inspiration." It's an effective balance between embracing what the tech can do (I'm dialing up my usage) and maintaining my personal connection to the code (I'm having fun + keeping things in my head).

I wrote about it: https://kamens.com/blog/code-with-ai-the-hard-way

Fun idea!

Building on that: there's a common children's magic trick involving a flip book that magically "colors" its pages (https://www.magicinc.net/products/fun-magic-coloring-book?va...)

It works by moving your thumb to a different position while flipping the pages -- every Xth page is cut at slightly different lengths, so when you move your thumb to the next position, different pages become visible during the flip

Using this trick you could show multiple different video clips in the flipbook just by moving your thumb to a different spot

I love that magic trick, but wouldn't that significantly thicken the cardstock flipbook ?

would it? I assume the trick is the sheets are slightly trapezoidal. Shouldn't that be enough?

Of course you're doubling the page count regardless of the approach ... that's likely unavoidable.

Josh your work is amazing

fellow t1d + engineer + competitive rower (20 years ago...sigh) here.

props on shipping an incredible personal project! if you ever want to geek out about diabetes tech, DM me on X @kamens

scott hanselman would probably also love to chat about your project

Thanks so much ! Appreciate the kind words about Islet. It still has a long way to go !

for those who don't know diabetes, this would be like publishing an article titled "Dementia risk soars for adults who repeatedly slammed their head into a wall as a child"

...and doesn't clarify that the study has absolutely nothing to do with alzheimer's / is only talking about blunt force trauma-induced damage