Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive July 1, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
Search ideas

Context —

was self-labeling himself as not credible. He had a hashtag BLM in his bio. He's a lawyer and today in 2023 he has a hashtag BLM in his bio. We yeah you know you immediately have to discount anything that comes out of that account because it's self-labeling. Is there somebody who doesn't know that BLM was a fake organization? Is he the last one? Nobody told him. Nobody mentioned that. All right w…

← Previous segment →

uation is going to lie.

Have you ever worked for a big corporation? They're all liars. Every department, every manager, they're all lying all the time. All the time. It never turns off. Do you know why? They make more money by lying. That's the whole story. Yeah a corporate incentive structure is whoever does the best work and people notice. The noticing is the important part. They get the most money and the promotions. So it's a system which by design guarantees that all the participants will be liars. You get that right? By design. By design you're paid for who thinks you did the best job not who did the best job. And so people are lying to get the big promotions. Everybody all the time.

Have you ever seen anybody's list of accomplishments in a company? Oh here are my monthly accomplishments. You'd be like okay all right it's a pretty long list of accomplishments. Yeah I do notice that the one at the top there that actually was that was last quarter and you know I asked you about your accomplishments this quarter so I won't count that one because that was last quarter. But you know there's still a lot of them on here. To see you participated. Well here's you just participated. Yeah I'm not sure you were responsible for this. You were just sort of attended some meetings but you've got this as an accomplishment. Okay and then we'll see there's your other accomplishments are oh it looks like you lowered expenses. That's great but hold on let me read this more carefully. You lowered expenses from what they could have been not what they were. So things could have been worse. So you're taking the what could have been worse as your benefit. I'm not sure that counts. And by the time you're done there are no accomplishments. Like all corporate people know how to make nothing into something and you all have to do it even at the employee level. So no.

Now to look at the ADL. Does the ADL find some really bad people and call them out? Of course yeah. They got a staff. They got to do some work. If they run out of really bad people are they done? Do you think they ever have a meeting and say wow looks like we got everybody and the few new ones we're getting them as they come. I mean we're just getting them all so everybody you can lower your efforts. We got everything covered. We found all the anti-Semitism. We've called it all out. We've done what we can. No. The by design entities are designed to grow. This is the default for any entity. It always wants to grow because when you're shrinking you're unhappy. When you're growing you're happy. Oh I'm in the right place. I'm definitely in the right place. This thing's taken off.

So if you create an organization to find discrimination they will first find all of the real discrimination because that's the low-hanging fruit and then they will go after fake things because that's where their money is.

Steve Jacobs you know he's talking to somebody. He says if you listen to Scott at any speed he sounds like an arrogant narcissist. Now let me ask you who is it that calls

Context —

people narcissists? Narcissists is literally built into the name. If you go online and say what is the main characteristic of a narcissist they'll blame you for being a narcissist. It's like their main go-to. It's like what they're famous for. Bet you didn't know that did you. All right so if Musk sues the ADL in a business that would be one of the best things for the country. And I do wonder if…

Next segment → →