Scott Alexander eulogizes Scott Adams (Dilbert creator), analyzing his life as a tension between being a brilliant humorist and desperately wanting to be seen as more, leading through failed business ventures and self-help philosophies to eventual cancellation and death. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reflects on the life and career of Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert), who died of prostate cancer at 68. The post traces Adams' journey from brilliant comic artist to failed businessman, religious philosopher, self-help guru, and ultimately Trump supporter, exploring how his lifelong tension between being genuinely clever and his inability to succeed outside of cartooning drove increasingly desperate attempts to prove himself. Alexander portrays Adams as someone who achieved world-class success in humor but couldn't accept that limitation, leading him through various failed ventures (restaurants, burritos, technology startups) and eventually into right-wing politics and cancellation. Despite the criticism, Alexander acknowledges Adams as a personal influence and teacher, ending with genuine tribute to someone who helped many people even while struggling with his own contradictions. Shorter summary

Scott reviews Steven Byrnes' work explaining how our perception of self and consciousness can flip between different models, similar to optical illusions, which explains phenomena like trance, hypnosis, and spiritual experiences. Longer summary

Scott reviews Steven Byrnes' 2024 series on predictive processing and self-models. The post explains how our perception of both external reality and internal mental states is based on models that can be bistable (flip between two interpretations). Just as optical illusions can flip between two interpretations, our sense of self can flip between different models. This explains phenomena like trance, hypnosis, dissociative disorders, and spiritual experiences. The post details how trance states work through a four-step process of belief, relaxation, suppressing contrary evidence, and gathering supporting evidence, then applies this framework to explain various psychological phenomena including Buddhist enlightenment and Julian Jaynes' theories about ancient consciousness. Shorter summary