not sure why your getting lots of downvotes, i think your take on adams is pretty good. i was reading scott adams for a while as im sure lots of people were when trump was rising. i kept reading for a while and kept on seeing things that were just really stupid to me. he seems to think because he is a "master persuader" that he knows more about _everything_ than everyone else, but in one post he ventured in the realm of statistics and made some _incredibly ignorant_ arguments. then i saw old posts where he had just as confidently predicted herman cain. so part of what he is doing is just playing a long game, calling unlikely things so that when one of them eventually happens, he looks smart. i dont deny he has interesting insights, but he is wayyyyyy to high on himself and his special little lens. when he posted on twitter that he could convince anyone to vote for trump in 1 hour, i had to unfollow.

i think manipulators are seen as smart by some people because they can be effective, but i have two points that seem to be forgotten: most of the time you eventually catch on to manipulators, and so they stop being effective, and, _more importantly_ they are just assholes. so, i say that it doesnt take intelligence to manipulate and bully and lie, it just takes gall. or heartlessness. as an analogy, i bet some of the lawyers who came up with the idea for ambulance chasing, or bankers who repackaged shitty subprime loans probably that they were really smart, when maybe it was just that there arent that many people willing to go that low.