Not so sure about the "rhetoric-pseudo-rational ramblings". He writes his opinions and gives arguments. Nothing "pseudo" about them, though they could still be (and often are) wrong, either factually or as a reasoning.
>It's very unlikely that somebody with "he is an ok graphic artist and has an ok humor" will get his success just because of such qualities.
Well, if they also knew about business workings, and did business-related comic strips at a time when nobody else (or very few) was doing them, then they might. Humor, like drawing, is honed over time anyway.
>A very ridicolous example of whom was when he was proving that Trump will be successful because, based on his observations, leaders who were great in the long term, typically had a rough start.
Well, his prediction did pan out, when all pundits said otherwise. Could be dumb luck, but he has been lucky often enough.
Theirs [the pundits'] arguments then, would be even worse "pseudo-rational arguments" that Scott's: because on top of claiming rationality, facts, legitimacy, and statistics on their side and being presented with fanfare on prime time (unlike a mere personal blog), they were also proven wrong.
See, I predicted Trump would win as well. It seemed incredibly obvious to me despite it being the worst possible outcome I could imagine. I based my "prediction" on my time spent in the US and a gut feeling. I guessing Adams did as well, and found ways to justify it (not exactly unique to him).
Adams tends to think in terms of "persuasion" as a skill. In that sense, he probably sees the world transactionally and cynically. I have heard him debate people with a good command of the facts and a similar combination of ego and articulation. He comes off as smug, too confident, and more like a small fish in a big pond than he does when he is just writing on his blog or "destroying" someone in social media.
It was terrible, couldn't get far into it.
If he drew like that but had no interesting content, no one would read the comics.
If he wrote jokes but couldn't illustrate them at even a basic level, they wouldn't reach many people.
And to be fair he could draw the absurd out of a semi-realistic situation, but he wasn't producing a treatise on modern management and how to run a business. You could find a lot of the same observations in water cooler chats at many workplaces.
He just made that really easy to consume and then got it in front of a lot of people. Which is probably a sign that he has a half decent understanding of distribution and promotion too. Once again he may not be a genius there but he knows enough to not screw up something good.
The guy has a ton of crank views
I seem to remember RationalWiki (or perhaps some other similar site?) as an occasionally snarky but generally high-quality wiki on rationality, fallacies, science vs. pseudoscience, the logical or other mistakes in arguments that have been given for quackery, etc.
Nowadays it seems like a lot of the content is just about bashing people who have expressed less-than-greatly argued opinions, with some kind of a special target drawn on conservatives.
I mean, you can also do that and not be wrong, but that's entirely different than (mostly) dispassionately documenting things, even if while doing the latter you'd be somewhat poignant.
Either the content seemed to have a different tone ~10 years ago, or I remember wrong.
Like everything in life, complex issues that have many facets are difficult to shoehorn into a right/left box. Sites like rational wiki excel at warping issues to make them simple binary choices. Life is hard, thinking is harder, you can’t outsource your judgments of the world and expect to have a clear picture of reality.
Weak sauce. That’s added nothing to the discussion of Scott Adam’s talents, hubris, ego, or cold logic skills.
Scott Adams is definitely not famous because "he is an ok graphic artist and has an ok humor". He's famous because his satire was fairly unique and very sharp. I think he's very talented in the humor department; in addition to his creating invention and sharp wit, very often his strips have two punchlines - in the middle and the last panel - which take twice as much effort as a "standard" comic strip.
His drawing skill didn't/don't really matter, as a matter of fact, he wasn't particularly good at the beginning, and his style is generic and simple anyway.
It's very unlikely that somebody with "he is an ok graphic artist and has an ok humor" will get his success just because of such qualities.
¹=A very ridicolous example of whom was when he was proving that Trump will be successful because, based on his observations, leaders who were great in the long term, typically had a rough start. Can't find the post.