561. Scott Adams and Jordan Peterson

Summary

Podcast Title: The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
Host/Author: Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
Episode: 561. Scott Adams on Cancer, Cancellation, and the Power of Saying Yes
Release Date: July 10, 2025

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1. Introduction and Personal Gratitude

Jordan Peterson begins the conversation by expressing his gratitude toward Scott Adams, the creator of the iconic Dilbert cartoon. He acknowledges the positive impact Dilbert has had on both himself and his son, highlighting the cartoon's ability to inject humor into a world often lacking it. Peterson also mentions a personal connection, noting that Adams created a cartoon based on him during his ongoing disputes with The College of Psychologists in Ontario.

"It's a little bit of satirical lightness in a world that's often. Often lacks humor. So thank you for that and also thank you more personally."
— Jordan Peterson [03:00]

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2. Scott Adams' Battle with Cancer

Scott Adams opens up about his recent diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer, emphasizing the terminal nature of his condition once it has spread beyond its original location. Despite the grim prognosis, Adams maintains an optimistic outlook, believing in the possibility of miraculous recoveries and advancements in medical science.

"I have terminal cancer, prostate cancer that's metastasized. And once it metastasized, you don't have the options of curing it like you would if it was localized."
— Scott Adams [00:30]

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3. The Power of Aim and Visualization

The discussion delves into the concept of setting a clear aim or goal in life. Peterson remarks on how aiming directs one's cognitive and imaginative faculties toward achieving that aim. Adams shares his personal experience with hypnosis and affirmations, illustrating how envisioning success can lead to unexpected opportunities and alignments in one's life.

"The spirit of your aim answers your prayers. This is literally the case because once you set up an aim, your imagination and your cognitive systems orient themselves to serve that aim."
— Jordan Peterson [00:48]

"I thought, I'm going to fix this problem—I always think I'm going to fix this problem."
— Scott Adams [75:49]

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4. Societal Changes and Malicious Envy

Peterson and Adams explore the current societal climate, focusing on the prevalence of malicious envy versus genuine compassion and fairness in influencing political and social ideologies. They discuss psychological studies indicating that malicious envy is a significant predictor of support for income redistribution, challenging the notion that compassion alone drives such beliefs.

"The biggest predictor was malicious envy. And the second biggest predictor was compassion. And fairness didn't enter the prediction at all."
— Jordan Peterson [10:11]

"Fairness was invented so children and idiots would have something to talk about because there's no standard for fairness."
— Scott Adams [10:23]

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5. The Journey to Creating Dilbert

Adams narrates his unconventional path to becoming the creator of Dilbert. He recounts the series of improbable events and coincidences that led to his success, including a pivotal moment involving a PBS special on cartooning. This segment highlights Adams' belief in the power of affirmations and being open to unlikely opportunities.

"So I decided the other part of the story is the reason that my corporate career failed is that my boss called me into office one day when I was working at a bank..."
— Scott Adams [23:14]

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6. Affirmations and Reticular Activation

The conversation shifts to the psychological mechanisms behind affirmations and how focusing on specific goals can rewire the brain to recognize opportunities aligned with those goals. Adams shares his experiences with affirmations leading to unexpected breakthroughs in his career and personal life.

"I've got a couple of hypotheses I've worked on to try to explain this whole thing so I could understand what's happening to me. You may have heard the term reticular activation."
— Scott Adams [52:28]

"So back to your example of why did I notice the end of a TV show about how to be a cartoonist? And would I have noticed that if I had not been doing affirmations?"
— Scott Adams [53:21]

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7. Systems vs Goals

Adams introduces his philosophy of "systems vs. goals," emphasizing the importance of having a systematic approach to achieving objectives. He explains how having systems in place allows for adaptability and responsiveness to unforeseen challenges, thereby increasing the likelihood of success.

"I have a saying that fairness was invented so children and idiots would have something to talk about because there's no standard for fairness."
— Scott Adams [10:23]

"So what I wanted was to... So now, almost anything that I do, I think, would somehow have some connection to a larger body of People who would benefit if I do it well."
— Scott Adams [65:09]

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8. Overcoming Personal Challenges

Adams candidly discusses his struggles with a rare condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which affected his ability to speak and draw. He shares how his unwavering optimism and belief in the power of systems enabled him to overcome these challenges, including undergoing experimental surgeries that restored his speech and manual dexterity.

"I've got prostate cancer that's metastasized... But what happened was I had also been looking at some other alternatives. Another drug that was kind of new..."
— Scott Adams [68:45]

"I have a habit of when I was trying to go to sleep or just daydreaming, I would think of little stories of largely impossibly unlikely things that somehow I had succeeded at least one of them because it made me happy..."
— Scott Adams [47:36]

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9. Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

In the concluding segment, Peterson reflects on the profound and often serendipitous nature of Adams' journey, drawing parallels to mythological narratives like the story of Moses and Jacob's Ladder. Adams emphasizes the importance of maintaining an optimistic outlook and being open to "saying yes" to opportunities, no matter how improbable they may seem.

"You set your goal and then the world arranges itself as a pathway to that goal..."
— Jordan Peterson [58:07]

"So I have a lot of help. Thank God for that. A lot of people looking out for me."
— Scott Adams [52:28]

"It's the more motivational frame."
— Scott Adams [76:40]

Peterson wraps up the discussion by expressing his appreciation for the insightful and "magical" conversation, hinting at future topics related to Dilbert, its cultural impact, and issues of cancellation.

"So, Scott, I'm going to bring this particular part of our discussion to a halt. I think that was an excellent place to close..."
— Jordan Peterson [76:31]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "Nothing's impossible."
  — Scott Adams [00:30]

• "The spirit of your aim answers your prayers."
  — Jordan Peterson [00:48]

• "Fairness was invented so children and idiots would have something to talk about because there's no standard for fairness."
  — Scott Adams [10:23]

• "The world's a better place because it had Dilbert cartoons in it by quite a substantial margin."
  — Jordan Peterson [19:49]

• "You have to have a pencil and a piece of paper really close all the time."
  — Scott Adams [61:09]

• "The spirit of your aim answers your prayers. This is literally the case because once you set up an aim, your imagination and your cognitive systems orient themselves to serve that aim."
  — Jordan Peterson [63:25]

• "I always think as big as I possibly can, you know, outside of myself, because that's the more motivational frame."
  — Scott Adams [76:30]

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Key Insights and Conclusions

1. Optimism in Adversity: Both Peterson and Adams highlight the importance of maintaining an optimistic outlook even in the face of severe challenges. Adams' battle with cancer and his overcoming of a rare vocal condition underscore the power of positive thinking and systemic approaches to problem-solving.

2. Aim and Perception: Setting clear goals or aims can fundamentally shape one's perception and cognition, aligning external opportunities with internal aspirations. This alignment can lead to seemingly miraculous coincidences that propel individuals toward their objectives.

3. Systems Over Goals: While goals provide direction, systems offer the necessary framework to navigate toward those goals. Adams emphasizes that having robust systems in place increases resilience and adaptability, allowing for sustained progress despite setbacks.

4. Societal Reflections: The discussion touches on broader societal issues, such as the role of malicious envy in shaping political ideologies and the impact of hyperconnectivity on the dissemination of ideas. They argue that a decrease in malicious envy, particularly in American culture, contributes to economic success and societal sanity.

5. The Power of Saying Yes: Embracing opportunities, even those that seem highly improbable, can lead to significant breakthroughs and successes. Adams' narrative serves as a testament to the benefits of openness and willingness to engage with unexpected possibilities.

6. Interconnectedness of Life Events: The conversation underscores how individual life events, personal beliefs, and external circumstances intertwine to create unique life trajectories. Adams' journey from a doubted cartoonist to a globally recognized figure exemplifies this intricate interplay.

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This episode offers a profound exploration of how personal mindset, systemic approaches, and societal dynamics interplay to shape one's life and accomplishments. Scott Adams' candid sharing of his struggles and triumphs provides listeners with both inspiration and practical insights into achieving success against the odds.

Transcript

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[Scott Adams]

Some of your viewers know that I have terminal cancer, prostate cancer that's metastasized. And once it metastasized, you don't have the options of curing it like you would if it was localized. So part of my system is to be open to all the possibilities, but the other is the belief that nothing's impossible.

[Jordan Peterson]

The spirit of your aim answers your prayers. This is literally the case because once you set up an aim, your imagination and your cognitive systems orient themselves to serve that aim.

[Scott Adams]

It wouldn't be the first time I had an incurable disease that I cured. I'm a really cocky bastard. I kind of enter a lot of situations thinking I could do this as an adult. I started thinking that I must be living in some kind of a simulation and that somehow the way I steer the simulation is by imagining what it is that I want to go toward. And then things fall in line.

[Jordan Peterson]

We're navigators and we navigate towards a destination like we set our sights by the stars. All of this is true. Most of us know Scott Adams as the creator of the world famous Dilbert cartoon, wherein for decades he offered a satirical critique of corporate culture and office life. But Adams is also a sage and a suffering sage. In mid May, he announced that he had received a prostate cancer diagnosis, which is most likely terminal. We spoke at length about his career, about his strange life, about the role of faith and affirmation in his movement forward, about technology, about optimism and service, and much more. Join us. It's a great conversation. First, I'd like to thank you for two things for Dilbert and also on behalf of my son for Dilbert, because he was an. Was an immense Dilbert's fan when he was younger than he is now and I spent a lot of enjoyable time reading Dilbert and so it's great to. To what? It's a little bit of satirical lightness in a world that's often. Often lacks humor. So thank you for that and also thank you more personally. You wrote a cartoon about me when I was in the midst of my. I'm still in the midst of my interminable war with The College of Psychologists in Ontario. And I don't think they were very happy about that. I certainly hope not. Apparently I'm to be re educated this month, so I'm dead serious. I, I, they've, they've, they've reduced my penalty to 12 hour session by Zoom, which I'm supposed to keep private but certainly will not. So. Yeah, well, I think they're part of their problem is that everything I said turned out to be correct. And so that's kind of annoying three or four years later. So thank you anyways, much appreciated for Gilbert and for the personal touch as well.

[Scott Adams]

Glad to help. I should add that I owe you an apology for something you might not be aware of.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay.

[Scott Adams]

When you first burst onto the scene and became sort of the biggest thing everywhere, I had not yet been exposed to your content. But when I was doing my podcast, the chat would turn into just a non stop, what do you think of Jordan Peterson? And I had to start blocking people because it just completely took over my podcast. And then finally after, oh, it must have been months and months of that, I thought, all right, I'm going to go look at your content. And I thought, oh, I get it now. I completely understand why everybody was pestering me. Because when I watched your content I had this weird sensation that I was like the less educated form of you. Meaning that I largely agreed with everything you were saying, but I didn't have the science behind it. So that was a big awakening for me. And then I got hooked on your content and absorbed a lot of it.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, so apparently we're approximately equally reprehensible. Is that the moral of the story?

[Scott Adams]

Well, whatever you were saying was certainly hitting with a lot of people, including me. So I guess we're all reprehensible.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, well, we've certainly moved to the point where many of us are reprehensible. So. Although maybe things are shifting back to something approximating whatever kind of sanity we might be able to accomplish. I see that Upenn stripped Will Thomas of his medals two days ago. And so I'm always thrilled when a 6 foot 5 man no longer gets to have medals in a female swimming competition. And to me that's a sign of sanity. But that's, I suppose, part of being reprehensible. And I don't know, how are you feeling about the current what Zeitgeist, let's say.

[Scott Adams]

Well, it's incredible the fact that Trump is doing so many things he said he would do. He's doing it as fast as possible. Maybe because the midterms could disrupt things. But now I'm mostly worried about how long it will last because all it takes is one election and everything goes back to where it was. And that would be pretty intolerable to me. But at the moment it just feels like non stop goodness. I saw people were trending. The golden age has begun this morning. So at least half of the country thinks things are great. And then I see the other half, I like to call it two movies on one screen. The other half of the country thinks they're living in some kind of nightmare Hellscape. And I wake up every day and I think, well, where's the Hellscape Art? It looks pretty good to me, so I'm enjoying it.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, as far as I could tell, the Hellscape is the remnants of what had happened over the last 10 years. I mean, things really seem to go sideways in a serious manner in about 2015. And maybe that was a consequence of us all becoming hyperconnected, eh? Because it's certainly possible that stupid, impulsive ideas spread faster than wise and sagacious ideas, right? I mean we've never.

[Scott Adams]

Well, yeah. One of the things I write about in Dilber all the time is that things start as good ideas when they're small. Do you remember when there was a big fad of re engineering and there's a book on it and everything and so re engineering was a great idea. It was the idea that instead of just tweaking something that wasn't working, you should think about how to rebuild it from scratch and really make it exactly what you wanted. Now who could argue with that? Except by the time you hit the corporate world, it turned into every manager has to re engineer everything or else they're not with the new thing. And then it just became absurd. Everybody was just looking for money to engineer, re engineer or something. And, and that seems like what happened with all the wokeness stuff. It probably started as well. Let's, you know, let's treat people respectfully and sort of acknowledge that people are different. And then it just turned into a whole different thing.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, I want, I wonder, you know, I read a couple of. There's three now, I think, psychological studies about, for example, about motivation for income redistribution. So imagine that you can generate a set of questions that reliably assess someone's attitude towards the more socialist idea of income redistribution so that you can place them on a continuum in relationship to their support for that idea. And you can do that relatively carefully so it's a stable measurement. And then you could look at what predicts that belief. And these particular psychologists looked at three factors. They looked at compassion, which would be the factor that you just described, genuine compassion, let's say. And that seems to reflect trait agreeableness, which is one of the big five personality traits. And they looked at fairness like actual moral concern with fairness. And they looked at malicious envy. And the biggest predictor was malicious envy. And the second biggest predictor was compassion. And fairness didn't enter the prediction at all. And so one.

[Scott Adams]

Well, I, yeah, I have a saying that fairness was invented so children and idiots would have something to talk about because there's no standard for fairness.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, I suppose the entire political discussion in some ways is about what constitutes fair. But it's interesting that the, you know, the claim is that it's compassion and concern with fairness, let's say that drives concern with, well, equitable wealth distribution. But if you do a careful analysis, it's malicious envy that's doing a lot of the work. And so I've become more and more skeptical of those of, you know, you said things start out good and then deteriorate. And I wonder to what degree that's the case because that malicious envy, two things, and I'd like your comments on them, that malicious envy certainly plays a role. I mean, that's a story as old as time because that's the story of Cain and Abel. And then there's also this proclivity for people to use God's name in vain, so to speak, which I did a very careful analysis of that commandment, trying to understand what it meant. And what it means is don't claim moral virtue when you're feathering your own bed. Right. And so you could imagine that the most egregious error you can make is to do something corrupt and then to sanctify it. Right. And there's a tremendous amount of that that characterizes our culture. Now, I think much more than that was the case, let's say, when I was half my age and because I just don't remember that being that prevalent, you know, that people would thump their chest and proclaim that they were on the side of the angels with quite the amount of force that seems to be the common tactic now. Maybe that also has something to do with being hyper connected, you know, because you can trumpet your moral virtue so easily into so many people that it's easy for it to be gamed.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah. When I was young, I grew up in a family where we were very much not rich, but we had a house that was directly across from the ski slope in town. So that's where the rich people went to ski. And I'm pretty sure that I was full of malicious envy at the time because the way we talked about the rich people was as if they were enemies who had somehow gotten there in some criminal way or some unethical way. And those are just sort of assumptions that they didn't deserve their money. And you could imagine that if things hadn't gone well for me, you know, if I didn't do well in school, so I had a path out that, you know, I could have become a criminal and just said, well, you know, you didn't deserve your money. I'll steal it from you.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right.

[Scott Adams]

So I feel I've gone from the malicious envy mode just because my circumstance and you know, hearing other people talk to all the way to now that I have things I want to protect, I find myself suspiciously in favor of things that protect my assets. And I talk as though those are the godly things and those are the systems that protect us all. And I mean it, because the arguments for it are all good. But I always ask myself, is it a total coincidence that all these things that I think are morally smart and good and systems that work better than other systems, is it my imagination that these are all good for me? I'm watching the big beautiful bill get passed and I could have spent time looking at all the ways it would affect everybody, but I found myself just looking at how it would affect my taxes. And I thought, there I go again.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, okay, some thoughts on that. I've been to a lot of different places in the world now, mostly in broadly in the west, let's say, but some other places as well. And there is one thing I've noticed that characterizes the United States more particularly and thoroughly than any other place I've been by a lot, which is that that sentiment of malicious envy is radically attenuated here. And there is a. A main major streak of American culture that's predicated on the opposite assumption, which is that it's possible to make good by doing well and that people who earn their living deserve to keep it. And that much of what constitutes true wealth is honestly gotten. And I do believe that that's a wellspring of wealth for the US And I've had a lot of dealings. Well, you have too, and we can talk about this. You've had a lot of dealings with the corporate world. I tend to go speak at corporate events. It's so funny, eh? Because with the evil corporate event. So if I go speak at a corporate event, this is my experience. So they pay me a lot. They're thrilled to see me. I can talk about anything I want. The audience is extremely receptive. Everyone's very hospitable, it's hyper efficient, and all things considered, it's a great pleasure. Okay, so that's the evil corporate world. Then if I go to a university, so they don't pay me anything. The administration and the students do everything they can to interfere with the experience and make it as miserable as possible, both directly in terms of challenge and also behind the scenes. It's very inhospitable, it's very badly produced, and mostly it's a royal pain in the neck. And so, and that's, that's. I don't think that's merely a matter of my self interest making itself manifest, you know, like, and I, I do think that the US continues to lead the world economically because that sentiment of malicious envy is more attenuated here by a lot than it is anywhere else in the world. So for what that's worth.

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[Scott Adams]

Wait, but what would be driving it in America over the other countries?

[Jordan Peterson]

You mean the lack of it?

[Scott Adams]

No, the malicious envy. Well, I think it's heavy. Is worse here.

[Jordan Peterson]

No, no, it's not. Where it's much less. Here it's much less.

[Scott Adams]

Oh, okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, no, it's much less. Well, there's a genuine sentiment of. And maybe that's part of the depth of the American dream. Like there's a genuine sentiment here. That you can make good by doing well and that if you do manage that, then you deserve the fruits of your labor and you could be admired for your hard work and your success. I mean, in your situation, we could analyze your situation. You know, you were worried about your self interest overwhelming your ethics. Although I'll tell you, I'd rather deal with someone honestly self interested than hypocritically altruistic any day. You know, you can deal with a greedy man because you know what motivates him. And if you can make a deal with him that also benefits him. Man, you're both playing the same game. And that's pretty simple compared to someone who, in whose mouth butter wouldn't melt and who's always working for the betterment of the human race. You have no bloody idea what they're up to or what motivates them. And so now you, I mean, you've come by your success by bringing joy, ironic joy, to hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people, and for a long time. And so that seems like a good deal for everyone. And if it provided you with a certain degree of material security and comfort and opportunity, then how in the world is that not a good thing for everyone? I mean, I think the world's a better place because it had Dilbert cartoons in it by quite a substantial margin.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, my first ambition as a child was to become a lawyer. Well, my first ambition was to become a famous cartoonist when I was about six years old. But I soon found out that it's very hard to become a famous cartoonist and the odds were very much against me. So I went through this age of reason from about age 11, where I was like, I better do something that will work. But the more I thought about being a lawyer, I was sort of pre law in my mind in college. The more I thought, wait a minute, the only way I can win as a lawyer is by making somebody else lose. I mean, there might be some exceptions to that, but generally it's an adversarial system. And I thought if I lose, I'm going to feel bad. And if I only win because I made somebody else lose, I'm going to feel a little bit bad about that too, depending on how badly I won. And so I thought, what about entertainment? You know, who loses when you get entertained? Nobody. You know, they win, I win. So I thought, well, I'll go into someplace where everybody wins. So that was both for my mental health, but also there was a moral dimension to that, which is I just couldn't build a Life around winning. I also thought, what if I'm really good at it? If you're really good at being a lawyer, in some ways that's the worst case because you're getting off guilty people, you're prevailing where maybe the facts were not really completely on your side. So being a great lawyer would feel a little bit sketchy to me, but being a great cartoonist, if you could ever get there, would just be all A plus. So I chose wisely in the end.

[Jordan Peterson]

So when you were six, you. You already had an inkling of your ambition. And who were your idols? Who were your cartooning idols?

[Scott Adams]

I saw an article about Charles Schulz in a big magazine display and I saw him standing there in his sweater and looking a lot like I look now with the glasses and everything. And. And I thought to myself, wouldn't that be the best job in the world? He draws one comic a day and he's world famous and he's got airplanes and stuff. And I thought, yeah, I'll just do that. But that's when you're a kid and you think you can be an astronaut or a NBA player if you just try really hard. But eventually I became smart enough to know it was impossible. And then I gave up that dream for years, as I mentioned, it wasn't until I was well into the corporate world and I learned that doing a good job in the corporate world doesn't exactly perfectly correlate with success, that there are just so many other factors that can take you down. That's when I started doing things that didn't make sense. They were sort of irrational. So I thought, well, I'll just try to become a cartoonist even though I don't know how to do it. And there was a weird sequence of events that allowed me to get into it that was so weird it made me, you know, doubt the nature of the universe, to be honest.

[Jordan Peterson]

You said you weren't very sensible and you were dreaming of impossible fame like Charles Schultz had. I mean, he had rockets named after his characters. I mean, that man was at the top of the world for a good while. And then you got sensible and you studied pre law and then you took a nosedive, let's say, into the corporate world. And then you stopped being sensible and then something impossible happened. And then you made an allusion to that. You said you had experiences that were so off kilter, let's say that it made you doubt the structure of the world. So, hey, man, elaborate on that.

[Scott Adams]

So I took a class in hypnosis when I was in my 20s, because my mother had given birth to my little sister while being hypnotized, because my family doctor was a hypnotist. And she reported having no pain and being alert and essentially awake, but still under hypnosis while she delivered a baby without, she said, without painkillers. Now, once I got older, I started to doubt this story, whether it was true. But in the meantime, in my 20s, I signed up for a hypnosis course, and one of the students was into something called affirmations. Now, most people have heard of it, but the way it was described to me was, oh, there's this book where if you just write down 15 times a day what you want, this magical coincidence, stuff will happen. And I thought, I'm not really a believer in anything magical. But she kept saying, well, you know, it doesn't cost anything. It's easy to try. You know, it worked for me. You know, some. Some lover from my past disappeared magically when I affirmed it. And I thought, all right, well, I'll give it a shot. And long story short, I picked some things which, according to her instructions, I picked some things which I thought were highly unlikely to happen on their own, such as a relationship that was, you know, with somebody who was way out of my league at that time. And it happened. And then some financial stuff that just seemed wildly unlikely happened, and they were both subjects of my affirmations. But I had been warned that if I didn't pick something that was wild enough, I wouldn't keep going with affirmations. I would just tell myself, well, I guess. I guess I'm a lot more attractive than I gave myself credit for. Or maybe my financial instincts are just wildly good. And sure enough, I did those things. So I said, I really got to give this the real test. And so I decided the other part of the story is the reason that my corporate career failed is that my boss called me into office one day when I was working at a bank and. And said, I don't know how to tell you this, but we've been told by management we can't promote white men anymore. And I said, what? You can't? Like, how long is this going to last? And my boss was a woman, said, well, we don't know, but, you know. So I thought to myself, all right, well, I quit. So I resigned soon after, went to work for the phone company, got on the fast path to management. And then one day, my boss called me in and said, I don't know how to tell you this, but the word has come down from management and you know where this is going, that we can't promote white men. And so that's when I decided, all right, I'm going to use an affirmation to become a famous cartoonist. So I started writing down, you know, I, scott Adams will become a famous cartoonist. Not just a cartoonist, but a famous cartoonist. And how do you do that before the Internet? Like, how in the world, if you had no connection to anything, it's not like there was a cartoonist college I could get into. I didn't know a cartoonist. So one day I come home. One day I come home and here's the magic part. I turn on the TV and I'm just flipping through the channels and it's before TiVo, you know, before. Before I didn't go to technology. And I see the end of a TV show on one of the PBS stations about how to become a cartoonist. But I tuned in too late. I only caught the end of it. So just enough to know what it must have been about. So I quickly ran and grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper, and as the closing credits were going by, I wrote down where they were broadcasting it from and the name of the host. And I wrote him a snail mail letter. And I said, I missed your show, but I would like to become a cartoonist. Can you give me some tips? Where do I start? And sure enough, Jack Cassidy was his name. He was a working cartoonist. He wrote back a two page handwritten letter in which he said, answered all my questions. He said, buy this book. It'll tell you where to submit things that people would buy. Use this kind of paper because you can erase it. A lot of times. Use these kind of pens. So I thought, oh, my goodness, now I know what to do. So I bought the book, I got the paper, I made a bunch of comics that I thought were pretty good. Sent them off to Playboy in the New Yorker and just some magazines because that was my ambition at the time. And they came back with rejections, but they weren't even. They weren't even personal rejections. They were literally photocopies of generic declines. We were not interested in your cartoons. So I thought at the time, well, I tried. I did my best because I really did try hard. I put lots of time into it, put my stuff away, forgot about it. A year later, I walk out to my mailbox and I get a second letter from Jack Cassidy, the original advice I'd gotten. And I thought, oh, I didn't even thank him for his advice, you know, because I suck. I just Sort of used it. And a year later, he's writing me a second letter. And I thought, what is this about? And I opened his letter and it said, he was clean, he was cleaning his office, and he came upon my samples I'd sent him a year before. And he said, and this was the same advice he gave me on the first set of advice. He said, I just wanted to make sure that you hadn't given up. And that was the only reason he wrote. There was no other agenda, didn't ask for anything. He just said, I want to make sure you didn't give up. And I thought to myself, well, what is he seeing that these other editors are not seeing? So I thought to myself, I'll raise my standard. Instead of trying to get published in a magazine which might give you a few hundred dollars a month, I thought, I'll try to become a syndicated worldwide cartoonist like Peanuts, and do the hardest thing you can do as a cartoonist, which is break it, to break into that market. So I put together some samples that were now Dilbert, because I'd been doodling him at work, and a coworker gave him a name, Dilbert, and sent him off to the half a dozen cartoon syndicates. Now, they're the ones that give you the big break. There were only half a dozen of them at the time. There are fewer of them now. And if they said yes, they would work with you to sell your comics to all the newspapers in the world. So if you got that break, that's like the break. So I sent off my samples because I had that book that had been recommended to me, so I knew where to send them, and the rejections started trickling in, and one of them suggested that maybe I should find an actual artist to do the drawing for me. Yow. So that's the kind of. That's the kind of feedback I was getting. So once I was pretty sure I had all the responses that I was going to get, I said, well, now I've tried as hard as I can twice, but I'm no fool. I'm not going to just keep chipping away for nothing. So I put all of my art materials away in the closet and I worked on my tennis game. And a few months went by, and one day the phone rang, and it was a woman who said that she was an editor for some company I'd never heard of, some company called United Media. And I checked my notes quickly, and I hadn't sent my samples to anybody by that name, but she said, we saw your samples. I Didn't know how. And she wanted to offer me a syndicated cartoonist contract. And I thought, okay. I mean, that would be the big break. But since I hadn't heard of this outfit, I said, well, I'm very flattered, but I've never heard of your outfit, this United Media company. Is there any cartoonist that you work with that's been published? Have you worked on anything like, I don't know, cartoons and magazines or a pamphlet or anything? And there's this long pause and she says, yeah, we handle Peanuts and Garfield and Marmaduke. And when she got to about the 12th name on the list, I realized that my negotiating position had been compromised. And I said, hell yes. Got a lawyer, got a contract, and it went from there.

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[Jordan Peterson]

So let's take apart the affirmation issue. Okay. And delve into that a little bit. So I have a program online called Future Authoring, and it's at a site called self authoring.com. and what it asks you to do is to write for 15 minutes about what your life could be like in five years if you were treating yourself well and you got what you wanted and needed. So you want to put yourself in a state of mind where you're treating yourself like you're worth taking care of. And then to imagine, play, pretend that things worked out for you and we kind of defined that it worked out would mean, well, you know, it's worth getting out of bed in the morning. You know, you feel like you're, you're. You don't feel like your life has a purpose that justifies its difficulty. You have enough opportunity and enough security, enough challenge, enough adventure, all of that. Just hypothetically, what would it take to satisfy a creature like you? And then just pretend. Write for 15 minutes. So that's the first part, and then the second part. Is okay, now do the reverse. Imagine that you let your stupidity get completely out of hand and auger you into the ground, and your life is about maximally miserable and you've contributed to it. What would that look like? Okay, now you've got poles, you've got little hell, and you've got a little heaven. And so your narrative world is arrayed, and then it walks you through a sequence of questions and answers about how you would operationalize your vision. Right now, people are visionary, right? We can manipulate our visual cortex with our prefrontal cortex so we can imagine various futures. But even more importantly than that, this is the affirmation issue. And maybe there's something more to it than this, but this is something. Everything we perceive in the world, we perceive around a goal. Like, that's how perception works. You know, if you're looking down the road, you look at where you're going, and everything relevant to that destination is what shows up in your visual landscape. We live inside a story. Like a story is literally a description of the structure of our perception and that frames our emotion and our attention. And so the affirmation story is actually true. It's like as soon as you set a goal, your perceptions orient themselves around that goal. And part of the reason that religious systems require you to aim up as diligently and religiously, let's say, as you can, is because if you structure your perceptions around the highest imaginable goal, then the world lays itself out as the pathway to that goal. That's literally how perception works. There's a great book by a man named J.J. gibson called an Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. And he was one of the early investigators into the structure of perception psychologically. And I've elaborated on his ideas to some degree. We see pathways, we see tools and obstacles, we see friends and foes, and we see agents of magical transformation. And agents of magical transformation change your goal. And that's literally how the world. But I'm curious about something deeper here too, because I don't know how the world cooperates with this. The fact that you caught the end of that PBS special makes sense to me because you had set your ambition and so that show became relevant and popped out for you. And so that pop out, that's what happens to Moses, by the way, when he encounters the burning bush. That's something pops out that changes him into a leader. He goes off the beaten path to investigate something. So anyways, it popped out for you and you pursued it, you know, but then you had these interesting. Well, are they coincidences. Like how do you make. How do you make sense of this? Because this character, Jack. What was his name?

[Scott Adams]

Jack Cassidy.

[Jordan Peterson]

Jack Cassidy. You know, that name rings a bell. Was he a relatively famous cartoonist? Was he an illustrator?

[Scott Adams]

No, he did the kind of work that you probably haven't seen because it wouldn't be a syndicated cartoonist, but he worked at that job for his whole life.

[Jordan Peterson]

Now the question is like, why? What motivated him? What elemental goodness of heart motivated him to not only reach out to you once, but twice? Right? Because that's a weird concordance, the fact that it happened at all. And thank God for that and bless his heart. You know, seriously, there's a man who went out of his way for reasons. Do you have any sense of what was motivating him? And then he did it again. Right, so that's right.

[Scott Adams]

But it's not even the end of the coincidences, because getting a big contract to be a syndicated cartoonist still gives you only a 1 in 20 chance of succeeding. Something like that. But here was what happened to me. First of all, the editor who liked me, the only one who liked me and said yes, she was married to somebody who had the same job as Dilbert. He was literally an engineer who wore a short sleeve shirt with pens in his pocket. So what she saw was her husband. So when she was saying, yeah, this could work, she was basically not her personal experience. So what were the odds with only, let's say, six editors in the world who could have offered me that opportunity? One of them was married to Dilbert. First of all, what were the odds next? That was enough to get published, but it failed on launch, so it only got in, I don't know, maybe a dozen newspapers. And sometimes they buy it just in case it becomes big, to keep it away from the competition. So they didn't even run it. So we sold into only a few newspapers. Maybe one of them ran it, I'm not even sure. So nothing was happening. But, you know, it got a little bit of purchase. Then the next coincidence happens. If you don't sell into one of the big newspapers, everybody ignores you. But if you can get into one of the big ones, then you can usually capitalize on that. So one day, the woman whose job it was to recommend comics for the Boston Globe, which was the big anchor paper for the Northeast, she looked at the Dilbert samples from from our salesperson and wasn't impressed. But one day, she and her husband were driving to some holiday destination. She was driving and he was bored. This was before cell phones and he didn't have anything to do in the car. He looks in the back seat, and there are a bunch of samples from failed cartoonists, including me. So he reaches in the back seat, pulls out the Dilber sample case, starts reading them and starts laughing like crazy. And the wife is like, what? Really? And he can't stop laughing and reading them to her. Now, what do you think he did for a living? Engineer. She was married to an engineer. She didn't get it when she saw it. But she trusted his reaction enough to recommend it. The bosses said, we don't see it. We don't see what you see in this comic. But it's your job to get this right, so we're going to trust you. And then it got in the Boston Globe. It was huge. All the newspapers in the east coast bought it. But then it gets wilder. The entire middle of the country, in the west, no sales. I mean, almost nothing. And I found out years later that the salesperson for the entire west coast simply thought my cartoon was bad. And so when he went in to sell things, he just didn't show it to people. He showed the other comics he had to sell. So here's where the lucky part happened. He died. He dropped dead in a hotel room on a sales trip. And, of course, I have a good alibi. But he was replaced by a guy who, as they tell the story, they brought him in, said, come, could you sell these comics? He was already in that business. And they laid down all the comics they had to sell, including Dilber. And I was told later that he went down the line and said, shit, this is shit. This is shit. This is shit. I can sell this one. He was the best salesman in the world. And I had a map with tax whenever it sold into a market. And I could watch him travel like an ant, you know, like I knew exactly where he was. Because the sales reports would come in and say, sold another one. Sold another one. Sold another one. He took the whole. The whole west coast because somebody died younger than they should have died, completely out of my control. And without those things, it just wouldn't have happened. And so during that time, I was doing my affirmations that I would become a famous cartoonist. And sure enough. And then one day, the Wall Street Journal asked me to write an article to be in the Wall Street Journal because they liked my comic. And I wrote an article for that. And then a publisher said, well, we like the article. Could you turn that into a book? And I'd never even taken a writing class except Business writing, which is specialized. And of course, I had learned to just say yes to everything. So I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, I could totally write a book. Yeah. How hard could that be? So while I was doing my day job, I'm doing my day job full time, I'm doing Dilbert full time, and now I'm writing a book. And it almost killed me. But I was doing my affirmations that I'd be a number one bestselling author.

[Jordan Peterson]

You know, one of the things I really noticed as a clinician and as a university professor was that people close doors to their movement forward constantly without noticing it. And it was partly because they didn't have their affirmations, let's say. So they actually couldn't spot an opportunity, Right. Because they had no goal directed vision. But often something would pop up that was unlikely. You know, it's hard to know how many unlikely things happen to you in your life. Like unlikely things are happening all the time. Your heart is beating, which seems rather unlikely if you think about it. I mean, unlikely things happen a lot. And some of those are going to be oriented towards, in principle, the pathway forward that you want. But if you say no, I mean, how many unlikely things that go in the right direction do you think you're going to get? It's not that many. Right. But if you say yes, then they multiply. So I'm curious about how you learned or decided to say yes and how that was related, if at all, to this affirmation issue.

[Scott Adams]

Well, you have to start with the fact that I'm a really cocky bastard. So I kind of enter a lot of situations thinking, I could do this. Yeah, I could do that. I had a childhood experience that probably sat me on that way. When I was 11, we would have these, these Easter egg hunts in our little town where you try to find the golden egg that was hidden among all the other eggs that were worth less. And for years I had thought, I will be the winner and find the golden egg. So this is maybe 1 in 200 situation, because there are lots of people there. And year after year, somebody else found it. And then my last year, I'm like, I'm going to get that freaking golden egg. And I try and try and try. And then the bell rings and the event is over. So now I'm basically retired forever because I've aged out of the Easter egg hunt. And I'm like, wow, I really thought I was going to find the golden egg one of these times. And then somebody announces, nobody found the golden egg. So we're going to narrow the field to where it is, and you're going to hunt again for another 10 minutes or something. And and I walked directly to the golden egg. And next thing I know, I'm in the newspaper holding up this little golden egg on the front page of my hometown newspaper. And that was one of the times there were others in which I said to myself, did this happen by coincidence? Like, do I have magic eyes that I can see golden eggs better than other people? How do you explain this in and so by the time I became a famous cartoonist and I was working on having a number one book, I just thought anything was possible. And you want to hear the weirdest one? Say yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes, definitely.

[Scott Adams]

Oh, okay. Here's the weirdest one. I also had a habit of when I was trying to go to sleep or just daydreaming, I would think of little stories of largely impossibly unlikely things that somehow I had succeeded at least one of them because it made me happy, and that I would go off to sleep thinking of positivity. One of them was that someday, and I didn't know the specifics of it, the President of the United States would summon me to the Oval Office and ask my opinion on something. And the idea was that I had become credible enough in whatever domain that a president would want to hear what I had to say. And then in 2018, I got a message that Trump wanted to talk to me, and I ended up in the Oval Office chatting with him. And he actually asked my opinion on something. And I thought, really, what were the odds of this? What are the odds of any of this being true? But my life has been consistently strange. By the way, you must be having the same experience.

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[Scott Adams]

You experienced the going from I have a really good job to something that's almost impossible to explain. The phenomenon which is you didn't. You have the same wild like, is there anything I Can't do. Did you have that experience?

[Jordan Peterson]

I think it's just a continual state of ongoing trauma. You know what I mean? It's so preposterous. I mean, my life is so preposterous all the time that, you know, actually one of the clinical markers for post traumatic stress disorder is derealization. So derealization is when something's happening, but it doesn't seem real. Like I don't have episodes of derealization. That's my life. It's like it's 100% preposterous things nonstop and I don't, I have no idea. I mean, I kind of learned. Learned, I guess, you know, back in 2017 or so, because this all blew up around me in 2016, 2017. I had this sense that I was on a hundred foot wave, you know, and that it would roll over me or it would flatten out. Those were the most likely outcomes, but neither of those happened. It just kept rolling on and. I don't know, I'm along for the ride, I suppose. Luckily, I have a lot of help. Thank God for that. A lot of people looking out for me. But. And the world is. You know, I really liked your story. It's so cool. Because that golden egg story, it's a perfect imaginative or mythological summary of everything that you just described that happened in your life, you know, and, and so, and I don't know, I don't know what to make of that. I, I do understand, as I said, like, perception is not what people generally think. Like, you don't see the objective world. You literally see pathways, tools, obstacles, friends and foes, and agents of magical transformation. That's the world. Now here's the weird thing, Scott, is like, you could think about that as a narrative overlay on the real objective world, but then if you're a scientist, you think, well, wait a second, we've been selected by evolutionary process, let's say, to perceive the world in a manner that most contributes to our, to the continuation of our life and our reproductive success. And so we see the world in a manner we describe as a story. Well, how are we to decide that that's not what the world is then? I mean, this is literally how we see. So.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, I've got a couple of hypotheses I've worked on to try to explain this whole thing so I could understand what's happening to me. You may have heard the term reticular activation.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yes.

[Scott Adams]

Where if you think about a certain outcome or a certain situation long enough, you essentially rewire your brain because you know your brain changes with every experience and everything you learn until you notice things that you wouldn't have noticed. And if you do it right and you're thinking about something positive for you, then you're going to notice that thing. So back to your example of why did I notice the end of a TV show about how to be a cartoonist? And would I have noticed that if I had not been doing affirmations? No, you and my answer? I don't know.

[Jordan Peterson]

It seems difficult to account for all of the unlikely coincidences that moved you towards your goal merely as a consequence of a shift in perception, right? I mean, I think that's the best way to account for it to begin with. The. The story about the PBS special in particular exemplifies that because it popped out for you. But then you also played your part because you paid very careful attention to the credits and you took the next step, right? So you had a magical doorway appear, but you also walked through it and looked for other doors. And then that set off this cascade of events. And I don't know, there are coincidental things happening all the time. I guess the question is, what would your life be like if you set yourself up so that you were maximally inclined to capitalize on those unlikely occurrences? Right. You were alert and awake and attentive and. Well, that's why I was so curious about your decision to say yes. Now, you tied that to that Easter egg story. Can you concretize that a bit? I mean, was that the first time you had an inkling that your determination, your vision and your determination could shape things around you in a desirable way?

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, that was exactly when I thought, I don't know, maybe life is wired in a way that's non obvious. And if you could figure out how that wiring works, you could control reality itself. So at least I was sort of open to the possibility. But this was also the age where I was watching, reading comic books and magic seemed more accessible. But as an adult, I started thinking that I must be living in some kind of a simulation. And that somehow the way I steer the simulation is by imagining what it is that I want to go toward, and then things fall in line. And you used the word authoring before, and that's my favorite word for controlling the simulation. Because you author a story and then you find yourself in the story later and it's just like you wrote the book and then you became the character in the book. And how do I explain that? That goes way beyond anything I can put together with cause and effect. So I'm not 100% sure that we live in a simulation, but I wouldn't be surprised if the day I die, I wake up in a gamer chair and they say only five minutes has gone by. But you live this entire other life in the game. So I always wonder, maybe there's more to find out. You never know.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, the fact that we represent the world with stories, primarily, and that we're instinctively oriented to find stories attractive, even stories of magic. Like, it was only this year that I figured out what an agent of magical transformation was, because they pop up in stories all the time. Because I think concretely, I think biologically, it's like, why are we predisposed to believe in agents of magical transformation? And then I thought, oh, I see. An agent of magical transformation is someone who comes along and changes the game, changes the aim. And that's what Gandalf does for the Hobbit, you know, he elevates him into a new game. And so that kind of magic happens all the time. And it's definitely the case that we perceive in relationship to a goal. There's absolutely no doubt about that, I don't think. There are few facts as well established in physiological psychology as the fact that we perceive in relationship to a goal. We are visionary. We do use our prefrontal cortex to manage the world using our visual system. We navigate. We're navigators, and we navigate towards a destination like we set our sights by the stars. All of this is true. What it means is. The thing that's so peculiar about it, as far as I can consider, is that I don't know what it means that the world is a story. That's not the same idea. That the world is a set of objective facts, which you know, is also obviously true in some way. Question is, which facts?

[Scott Adams]

Right.

[Jordan Peterson]

The question is relevance. And so now, did your parents. I often ask my guests about their parents, especially if they. Well, most of the people I interview have been successful in one way or another. You said you're cocky. I think you said you were a cocky bastard, although maybe you didn't use exactly that phrase, but that was the gist of it. What. What kind of relationship did you have? Or do you have? Did you have with your parents? Like, did they. Were they. Were they responsible for your confidence in some part? Or was that something you think that was more a mere a manifestation of your essential character? Like, what did your. What was your relationship with your parents like?

[Scott Adams]

All right, so here's where it gets Even weirder. My parents are part of this story, but others as well. When I was very young, people would. Adults would tell me that I was going to be rich and famous someday, and they would even use the same term. I once got stopped on the street by an older woman who, you know, it was a small town, so she wondered who my parents were and stuff. And she's just chatting with me for a minute, and before she leaves, she goes, you're going to be rich and famous someday. My mother told me that she expected me to get rich someday so I could take care of her in the manner which she would like to become accustomed to. That was her standard joke. But I literally became rich and then helped them live in a life that was closer to the standard they wanted to live. And so she always had her own confidence. She was also an artist, by the way, so she was a portrait artist. And I picked up the drawing fever from either her genes or her example. I don't know. My father was a wannabe comedian, meaning that he'd say funny things or all of his letters were funny. So I got kind of the dry humor from him. I got the. The confidence from, I think, my mother, but from other people as well. People spotted me early. Now, there's one thing I wanted to add to what you're saying about goals. I don't know if you've heard me talk about this, but I famously write about systems being better than goals, meaning that having a goal but having no system that would help you, being prepared for it isn't enough. You gotta have this. So even if you take the simplest one, like when I saw the TV show about how to become a cartoonist and I quickly wrote it down, part of my system has always been to make sure that you've got a pencil and a piece of paper really close all the time. That was my actual system, and that's never changed. Now, how many times have I gotten an idea and I've got exactly 15 seconds to write it down.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Scott Adams]

Before something changes. You know, somebody walks in and, you know, I forget it. So that's the smallest example.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's. That's very astute, I think. I mean, one of the things I've learned as I've spent decades writing, is that, like, if I'm laying in bed and I have an idea, I go write it down because I know I'll forget it. I forget it. It's like, who knows what use that idea is? And, you know. So here's another thing that's extremely Cool. So you set your goal and then the world arranges itself as a pathway to that goal, and then everything relevant to that. But that's also. This is so uncanny. That's also how your imagination works. Your thoughts. So your aim calls forth revelation. That's literally. Well, it makes sense if you think about it for a minute. Imagine that you decide you're going to go somewhere. Well, then obviously what your thoughts should do is circulate around that trip, because what the hell good are they otherwise? But here's the crazy part. The spirit of your aim answers your prayers. This is literally the case because once you set up an aim, your imagination and your cognitive systems orient themselves to serve that aim. And so again, part of the religious insistence is serve the highest aim. Well, what is that? Well, that's up to you to figure out. To some degree, it's like most of us can tell the difference between an aim that's somewhat better than the one we have and somewhat worse. Like we've got a pretty good sense of comparative aim. But if you understand that your perceptions and your imagination and revelation itself is structured by your aim, then, well, that makes the world an entirely different place. It's also rather terrifying, you know, because if. If you have a pathological aim, then that will structure your imagination.

[Scott Adams]

Right?

[Jordan Peterson]

That's very close to demonic. That's very close. Analogy.

[Scott Adams]

Let me. Let me give you a little story that plays perfectly into that. When, when I was younger, I got married for the first time and I had step kids. The marriage didn't work out after several years. And because they're step kids, you don't get, you know, joint custody or anything like that, so that the loss is huge. Like you lose everything, your family, all at the same time. And I realized that that was my sort of main goal in life, was making this little unit happy and healthy and safe. And when that went away, I realized, man, I'm going to need some kind of motivation, right? And I. I actually said out loud I was alone, but I said out loud that I was going to donate myself to the world and that from that point on, I would only work on things that had some larger multiplayer multiplying effect on the world. And that's when I started writing my books like how to Fill. And almost everything still went big, which has had a big impact on people's success. It's why I talk about politics, because I think it's useful. It's why I do everything. So everything I do now has to have some connection to a larger body of People who would benefit if I do it well. And that revived my sense of meaning at a higher level so that I haven't had an unhappy day in, I don't know, 20 years. Because even if it's a bad day, I know I'm working toward this larger benefit.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right? Okay. So. So a couple of things related to that in the story of Abraham, like, Abraham is a sequence of upward transforming goals, right? So, so the Father of nations is a man who reorients his goals in an increasingly upward direction as he moves through life, right? And, you know, he ends up charged with the responsibility to try to save the doomed city. That's Sodom and Gomorrah. He fails at that, but he's still charged with that responsibility. And there are prophets in the Old Testament who succeed at such things. Jonah succeeds, for example. And so Abraham is. The story of Abraham is structured as a set of transformations, upward transformations of goal. And that story that you just told is, you know, you could see there that you moved from the proximal. Not that your family wasn't important and transcendent in a sense, because it clearly was, but you broadened that. And then the meaning that you described, like, we actually experience positive emotion in relationship to a goal. And so if you set a high goal, then any indication of movement towards that goal floods you with dopamine, essentially. It produces new neural circuits, and it's the essence of positive emotion that's motivating. And so now, one other thing, that's also the meaning of the vision of Jacob's Ladder. You know, Jacob decides he's going to stop being an utter reprobate, and he turns his eyes towards the heavens, let's say, because he decides he's going to improve. Then he has a vision of a structure that connects heaven to earth with the ultimate goal at the top basically defined as God, right? In the Jacob's Ladder vision, you can't see God because he's at the pinnacle, and the pinnacle recedes as you move towards it. But that's the definition. And then the voyage of life becomes that climbing up that ladder, making the goals deeper or higher, depending on how you look at it. That also all that, all that seems to be correct psychologically, as far as I can tell. Like, it's not in the realm of superstition and myth. It's. That's just how things work. So how did you see? That's so interesting too, Scott, because, you see, you could have despaired when you lost your family. You could have shake, shake, shook your fist. At the sky and cursed God. You know, that's what Job's wife tells him to do when he's suffering. You know, she says there's nothing left for you except to shake your fist at God and die. But you decided to replace a goal that was already positive with one that was broader and more positive. How. How do you think you overcame your resentment, your bitterness, your sense of loss? And I'm also curious about how that's playing out now, because we haven't talked about this, but I know that you're quite ill, and so that's also germane. So why did you decide to stay? Go ahead.

[Scott Adams]

Well, I think the answer is that I was born with some kind of innate optimism that never turns off. So I could have horrible situations. And it barely affects my optimism. I just think, well, today was bad, but look at tomorrow. To your point, some of your viewers know that I have terminal cancer. So I've got prostate cancer that's metastasized. And once it metastasized, you don't have the options of curing it like you would if it was localized. And five months ago or so, the pain started, you know, because the tumors are all over my body and I was unable to walk. I was using a walker and a wheelchair, and I was just wracked in pain. Every single day, every day was a nightmare. And in California, you get to choose your end date if you want to, meaning you can take your own life with a very civilized process that's legal in California. So I had planned that I wouldn't want to live in excruciating pain forever because my productivity was not going to be that good anyway. And I'd picked a time for that. And the time was this week. But what happened was I had also been looking at some other alternatives. Another. Another drug that was kind of new. And in. One of the requirements for the new drug is that first I have to take these castration drugs, they call them, which I'd been putting off because no guy wants to sign up for castration, but they literally turn off your testosterone, which is why they call it that. And the cancer needs the testosterone to grow. What I didn't realize is that the moment I started taking the testosterone blockers, which was just about three weeks ago, I think it removed all of my pain, and now I can walk again unaided. My day is largely just completely normal now. It probably bought me maybe something like months to a few years. Nobody knows, because eventually the testosterone blockers, your body acclimates to them and does A workaround. So it won't last forever. But we've hit the age of AI and there's probably something in the lab somewhere that can fix me. And I've got this little window where the pace of scientific discovery, especially in healthcare, will probably be wilder than it's ever been before. And I might have, just by luck, I might have just enough time to use that little window to find a way out, because there's no way out. But it wouldn't be the first time I had an incurable disease that I cured. You probably know the story, or some of the listeners do that some years ago I lost my ability to speak to a rare condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which RFK Jr. Has a version of it, a little, little different version. In my version, if I ordered a Diet Coke, some of the letters would get swallowed and it would sound like I could go, go. And so I couldn't have any kind of a normal life. This was may have also been one of the reasons that my first marriage ended. Because you couldn't have normal conversations or have friends over and it was incurable, so you basically lived with it. Or you took painful Botox shots through the neck into your vocal cords and you had to keep doing it and it would ebb and flow in effectiveness and it would sound like you adjusted on helium. You talk a little bit like this. So I made the difficult decision to give up on the thing that would let me talk at least a little bit, which was the Botox, just in case I could find something that worked better for what was considered by the experts incurable. So I set my Google alerts to tell me if there's any new science about this condition. And every time something beeped, I'd look into it as much as I could. One day there's a little beep on my alerts that says a Japanese doctor. I come up with a surgery to put in some kind of a shunt or something and that it was having great effect. So I went to my doctor and I said, is this real? And he said, well that particular doctor, we know of him and he's an over claimer, so probably not real, but I happen to know of a guy who seems to have some different kind of surgery, Dr. Gerald Burke down at UCLA's head, neck, whatever it is, and you should talk to him. So I look into it. I talk to him. He says he's developed a newish surgery in which he would sever the nerves between my brain and my vocal cords, which are in the front of the neck, and that he would redirect them, essentially take some nerves out of the neck and create a new path just in this little area. And that it worked on most of the people he tried it on, but not everybody. So he said, if you try it, there's maybe an 85% chance that you'll be pretty happy with it. It'll be at least better, if not a complete cure. And 15% chance that it will ruin any chance you'd ever have of getting better because it'd be a permanent change. And I signed up and now I get to talk to you. And as you can tell, my voice is completely serviceable. And that was an incurable disease. Incurable. Likewise, when you have one of those problems, it's a muscle spasm thing. In that case, it was vocal cords. They often come in pairs. Nobody knows why, but the spasm is actually caused by your brain. It's not actually the muscle. That's why cutting the connection somehow worked. But I lost the ability to draw because my pinky would spasm and I couldn't control it. But getting back to systems versus goals, for years I had practiced drawing left handed just in case something ever happened to my right hand. It was part of my system. And so it got to the point recently where I've been drawing all of my comics left handed for, I don't know, a few years now, and no difference because I practiced it so long that I can pull it off now. So, so what I want.

[Jordan Peterson]

Engineered redundancy.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, so. So part of my system is to be open to all the possibilities, you know, the reticular activation. But the other is the belief that nothing's impossible. So if it were someone else with any of those problems, as an observer, I probably would have said, well, you're, you know, you're done. But when it's me, I never think I'm done. I always think, well, not only am I going to fix this problem, I'll do what I did with the spasmodic dysphonia. I'll make sure other people know it exists. So I did a lot of outreach and People magazine did a spread on it so that other people could know that they could get secure.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Right.

[Scott Adams]

So I. I always think as big as I possibly can, you know, outside of myself, because, again, that's. That's the more motivational frame.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Well, Scott, I'm going to bring this particular part of our discussion to a halt. I think that was an excellent place to close. That was quite the lateral and sideways conversation. I didn't expect that. It was quite magical. I really liked the tie in with the Golden Easter egg hunt. That was a real nice narrative touch. For everybody watching and listening, I'm going to talk to Scott more about Dilbert. I want to know how his life changed when he became a extraordinarily well established cartoonist, what effect his cartoons had on corporate and engineering culture. And then I want to talk to him as well about cancellation and his new life. And so, obviously, we could talk for several hours, but we have another half an hour on the Daily Wire. And so you guys could all join us for that. Anyways, thank you very much, sir.

[Scott Adams]

Thank you.

[Jordan Peterson]

Thank you very much. And yeah, and to everybody watching and listening as well, for your time and attention.