Scott Adams, famous for the Dilbert cartoon strips for much of his career (then infamous, for … ‘reasons’ in the latter part of his career) died on 13 January 2026, aged 68 years. Back in the 1990s he was my father’s favourite cartoonist (in a shortlist of one), and so, vicariously, he became my favourite cartoonist too.
Another Scot A, Scott Alexander, famous within the so-called ‘Rationalist’ community of the perennially overqualified, geeky, and under-employed recently wrote a long piece discussing, amongst other things, the appeal of the Dilbert cartoons, their fit to 1980s and 1990s corporate norms in which people in nominally ‘good’ (white collar) jobs were expected to seek quiet consolation in cynicism (rather than quit), and how arguably Adams’ tendency towards cynicism led to him valorising that paragon of cynicism, selfishness, and mass manipulation (or in Adams’ term, ‘mass persuasion’), Donald J Trump.
Alexander claims in the above piece that Adams feasted long on his one good prediction: that Trump would win the 2016 US Presidential election, at a time most pundits thought this possibility was vanishingly unlikely.1 Adams wrote around the time about Trump’s almost magical ability to ‘hypnotise’ crowds of thousands, then tens of thousands, then millions, and Trump’s very smart way with words.2 Far from Trump’s ever simplifying vocabulary tendency to repetition being signs of declining cognitive capacity, Adams argued, they were instead indications of Trump’s ever improving stagecraft, his ability to understand what does, and what does not, resonate effectively with his ever growing crowds of supporters. From Adams’ perspective, Trump wasn’t speaking like a petulant child because his brain was going to mush, but because this is what the crowd responded to best. Trump wasn’t a simple bully, but a master of testing and crafting ‘linguistic kill shots’.3 Trump wasn’t rambling in his repetitive speech, he was ‘weaving’, hypnotising the masses, implanting ideas and frames, making the masses and mass media alike follow and parrot his agenda, even if (nominally) the mainstream media did so to criticise and take umbrage at his latest ‘outburst’.4
But Adams has had a long history of making ‘predictions’, even if many of these were so vague as to be unfalsifiable, and exaggerated for comic effect. In particular, in 1997 Adams wrote a book called The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century, which contained over 60 such ‘predictions’ about the future. As from 1997’s perspective, we’re surely now living in the future, I thought maybe it would be good to look at these predictions, and see how well they stood up.
And then, like ‘magic’ (maybe like something that has been conjured into coincidence by something like the ‘affirmations’ Adams ended the book describing), I chanced upon a copy of The Dilbert Future a week ago at one of Edinburgh’s free book exchanges. So I picked it up. Aside from a blue ink stain on one edge of the book, it was in good condition, meaning I could see and copy out all 65 of Adams’ predictions from 1997.
Below are each of the predictions, written exactly as they were in the book. After each prediction I’ve put my immediate thoughts on each claim, in which I aimed to be charitable where possible in interpreting ambiguous statements in the most positive way possible, and to ‘price in’ any comic exaggerations in his wording, such that if his claims were pointing in the direction of a trend that’s since come about, even if the precise claim is about such trends having by this point reached an illogical conclusion, I’ve tried to give him credit for at least being ‘on trend’.
The Predictions
Prediction 1
In the future, authors will take a long time to get to the point. That way the book looks thicker.
This both waxed and waned. Books that had simple and easily marketable messages, so were repetitive and padded, did become more popular. But then books themselves have become less popular. (At least non-fiction. Fiction loves taking a long time to get to the point.)
Prediction 2
In the future, you will wish I had never put the image in your head of me doing jumping jacks in an open kimono.
This follows Adams’ long standing interest in and overegging of techniques for persuasion, including a tendency to describe a lot of manipulative behaviours as being some kind of hypnosis.
Prediction 3
On average, Induhviduals who are alive today will experience 80 years of complaint-free living. Unfortunately they’ll live to 160.
It is true that for the last generation or so the gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy has grown.5
Prediction 4
The people who are studying Tai Chi Chuan instead of saving money are planning to beat us up and take our stuff when we’re retired.
This seems to be an insinuation that more conscientious and less open types will tend to be more right wing, and less conscientious and more open types (thinking OCEAN/Big Five) will tend to lean left wing.6
Prediction 5
The people who are alive today will appear grotesque to the perfectly engineered children of the future.
There are many memes about how (say) 35 year olds from the 80s look much older than 35 year olds from the 2010s and beyond. So though not genetic engineering there’s maybe something here.
Prediction 6
In the future, we will accelerate our successful practice of brainwashing children so they’ll be nice to us while we plunder their planet.
There’s maybe been more cultural enforcement of performative niceness. But this seems to be younger cohorts influencing themselves, not older cohorts intentionally and successfully influencing younger cohorts.
Prediction 7
Life in the future will not be like Star Trek.
Very true. Even Star Trek’s no longer much like Star Trek.
Prediction 8
In the future, there will be a huge market for technology products that help workers goof off and still get paid.
True (but not huge). Especially with home working. For example devices that move mice and press keys on a keyboard so it looks like someone’s at their keyboard, even if they’re not.7
Prediction 9
In the future, Internet capacity will increase indefinitely to keep up with the egos of the people using it. Cost will not be an issue.
Capacity and speed have continued to grow exponentially, such that it’s largely become a water-like commodity.
Prediction 10
In the future, your clothes will be smarter than you.
Not clothes (water and electronics don’t mix). But extend this to wearable tech and this is broadly correct.
Prediction 11
In the future, Network Computers will be purchased and used with the same enthusiasm as home exercise equipment.
Truish if I understand context. Smartphones made ‘proper computer’ use less common; hence the web becoming mobile first.
Prediction 12
In the future, ISDN services will improve to the point where you can mention it in a crowd without generating laughter.
If internet services, yes.
Prediction 13
In the future, we’ll all use sophisticated Bozo Filters to prevent idiots from communicating with us.
Blocking, filters, algorithmic matching of content to feed people people they want to hear from and ideas they want to hear. Broadly true. This includes the shadowbanning on Twitter Adams complained about in the pre-Musk days (which in this sense makes him the bozo being filtered.)8
Prediction 14
In the future, kids won’t have access to online pornography, because the X-rated Internet sites will be clogged by horny adults who have more patience.
Self contradictory with other claims about increased capacity. Not happened I assume.
Prediction 15
In the future, technology will continue to make our lives harder and many of us will be delighted about it.
I have a broad sense this is true but it’s so vague it’s just a gut feeling that can neither be verified nor falsified.
Prediction 16
In the future, scientists will learn how to convert stupidity into clean fuel.
If eating deep fried food is stupid then I guess it’s true in that oil from takeaways and restaurants are increasingly being used as biofuels.
Prediction 17
In the future, technology will become the leading cause of death.
Flip this: technologies may instead be the leading cause of poor, overextended lives spent in poor health and with low quality of life.
Prediction 18
In the future, computer-using men will be the sexiest males.
No.
Prediction 19
In the future, we’ll realise that the creatures we thought were from other planets are actually smart people who live in Switzerland.
Nope.
Prediction 20
In the future, the trend of “personal services” will continue until busy people are handling almost none of their routine bodily functions themselves.
Exaggeration. But takeaway and delivery apps means there’s less need for personal planning and many essential errands are now outsourced or outsourceable.
Prediction 21
Lack of education will not be the biggest problem in the future. The problem will be an excess of stupidity as more people fall below the incompetence line.
This feels true, but likely my prejudice. The share of young people going into further education has tended to increase, but arguably the quality and value of many courses that constitute much of the expansion has decreased.
Prediction 22
In the future, there will be a huge increase in the number of “household services” to compensate for the pathetic incompetence of the average person.
See prediction 20.
Prediction 23
Democracy and capitalism will continue to give the shaft to lazy and stupid people. Neither group will complain.
This is just a cynic’s shibboleth.
Prediction 24
In the future, most democratic countries will be led by tall people with good hair and smart staff members.
I expect this is true (adjusting for changing sex composition in political office).
Prediction 25
In the future, the value of your vote will become less than zero. That happens when the amount you pay in taxes to have your own vote counted is less than the value you get from the vote itself.
See prediction 23.
Prediction 26
In the future, voters will be so baffled that they’ll want smart people with bad hair to tell them what to do.
No. They’ll prefer smart people with good hair, or settle on dumb people with good hair, before listening to smart people with bad hair. (However, they’ll increasingly consider no hair to be good-enough hair.)
Prediction 27
In the future, scientists will create a powerful and legal aphrodisiac.
Semaglutides?9
Prediction 28
In the future, women will run the world in all democratic countries.
An increasing trend, but a comic exaggeration.10
Prediction 29
In the future, religious groups will get mad at me, thus boosting my book sales.
Depends on whether Adams would have considered ‘The Woke’ to be a (secular) religious group. Instead ironically the last few months of Adams’ life involved a lot of support from Christians, leading to Adams’ deathbed conversion because Pascal’s Wager.11
Prediction 30
Most scientific and technical breakthroughs in the next century will be created by men and directed at finding replacements for women.
Maybe an element of this but I don’t think it’s been the prime driver.
Prediction 31
In the future, skilled professionals will flee their corporate jobs and become their own bosses in ever-increasing numbers. They’ll become entrepreneurs, consultants, contractors, prostitutes, and cartoonists.
There has been a marked increase in self employment and diversity of contractor services. There seem to have been both push and pull reasons for this.
Prediction 32
In the future, the balance of employment power will change. We’ll witness the revenge of the downsized.
Maybe this hasn’t happened so much as younger generations demanding different rules and conditions in employment — such as better work-life balance and improved mental health services — than earlier generations.
Prediction 33
In the future, highly qualified people will go on job interviews purely for recreation.
Not really. Getting a job interview has itself become a very effortful process. They’re too rare and valuable to be treated recreationally.
Prediction 34
In the future, salaries will go down for people in medium-skilled jobs, thanks to the godforsaken hellhole called North Dakota.
Median wages have long been suppressed, and gone down in real terms due to inflation. But this isn’t due to North Dakota.
Prediction 35
In the future, employees will either be superstars or perspiration wipers. Those who aren’t qualified to do either will become managers.
In many roles the gaps between top and median outcomes seem to have increased.
Prediction 36
In the future, all work will be outsourced, until all the work on the planet is being done by one guy.
Much has been outsourced. But this is another trend that seems to have slowed down or reversed.
Prediction 37
In the future, more people will work for themselves, creating a huge market for bizarre products.
See the crap advertised on Facebook. And Gwyneth Paltrow.12
Prediction 38
In the future, filthy, perverted hobos will refer to themselves as telecommuters, until someone points out they aren’t being paid.
Self employment does make it easier to designate oneself as being someone one isn’t getting routinely paid for for longer.
Prediction 39
In the future, aggressive companies will replace standard cubicles with head cubicles.
Worse: open plan!
Prediction 40
In the future, your only choices for new project names will be ones that sound undignified.
Wrong. Project names can be just as bland as ever. Combinatorials do a lot of work.
Prediction 41
In the future, it will become increasingly obvious that your competitors are just as clueless as you are.
Only if you work across multiple competitors. Which given shorter tenures in any particular role is maybe more likely.
Prediction 42
In the future, all barriers to entry will go away and companies will be forced to form what I call “confusiopolies”.
This was Adams’ best genuine economic contribution. By making products incomparable and multi-factorial, standard market pressures fail to make products ‘better’ than each other, just different. This either creates more scope for personalisation of services for customers, or more ways for multiple companies to generate excess profits from confused customers. What happened with mobile phone contracts seems almost perfectly predicted by the Confusiopolies concept.13
Prediction 43
In the future, the science of advertising will improve to the point where buying what you see in an advertisement is no longer optional.
The nightmarish dream for profit for tech companies has been to make advertising ever more targeted, personalised and subtle. At the extreme this becomes companies profiling customers so well they only present products the customers actually ‘need’, all the time.
Prediction 44
In the future, companies will make aggressive products that resist any attempt at refunds or cancellation while actively trying to take more of your money.
Definitely. Many online subscription services operate on the Hotel California Principle: easy to join (free month trial etc), very hard to leave (obscure cancellation options; more, effortful steps, then very charismatic salespeople as the final defence for anyone who wants to quit a service.)14
Prediction 45
In the future, it will be easy to find customers who are gullible enough to buy any product, no matter how worthless and stupid it is.
See prediction 37.
Prediction 46
In the future, the most important career skill will be a lack of ethics.
Especially POTUS and POTUSians?
Prediction 47
In the future, poverty will be eliminated, along with the people who are hoarding all the money.
No or not yet.
Prediction 48
In the future, the age of consent for sex and liquor will be raised to 120.
No or not yet. Though social norms may be moving more in this direction.
Prediction 49
In the future, new technology will allow police to solve 100% of all crimes. The bad news is that we’ll realise 100% of the population are criminals, including the police.
No. Maybe more so in China?
Prediction 50
In the future, more people will actively ignore the news because it is irrelevant.
More that more of the news that’s being fed to people is algorithmically filtered, rather than something people choose to ignore. And much of it isn’t news.
Prediction 51
In the future, the media will kill famous people to generate news that people will care about.
Fortunately not.
Prediction 52
In the future, everyone will be a news reporter.
Approximately true in the sense that anyone can record a breaking event if it happens to happen in front of them, with their phone. The issue is not means but inclination.
Prediction 53
In the future, the thing we’ll miss most about the traditional “news media” will be the professional reporters asking penetrating questions.
Largely true. Though I think Adams might have perceived the ‘mainstream media’ to have been somewhat self defenestrating in these regards (as a Trump supporter).
Prediction 54
In the future, parents will have to pass a brief written parent test in order to get tax credits for dependents.
Only to the extent there is systemic underclaiming of benefits in many rich nations, much for reasons of finding forms confusing and unapproachable.
Prediction 55
In the future, it will be illegal to threaten yourself, and the penalty for doing so will be death.
No.
Prediction 56
In the future, assisted suicide will be a medical specialty practiced by doctors who don’t like people.
It’s not emerged as a specialty, and it’s likely for people who don’t like people to suffer unnecessarily, rather than don’t like people. But assisted suicide has trended towards becoming more accessible over the last 29 years.15
Prediction 57
In the future, there will be no compelling reason to invade anyone’s privacy.
Not true. False.
Prediction 58
In the future, you’ll hear the phrase, “I’ll be right back. I gotta take a wicked withdrawal.”
No. Though youth slang has continued to evolve and become unintelligible to older generations.
Prediction 59
In the future, there will be drive-through pet facilities.
No.
Prediction 60
In the future, you will not need a supercomputer and a team of scientists in order to get good nutrition.
Possibly truish: both semaglutides and recognition that diets that ‘flip the food pyramid’ (high fats; low carbohydrates) may be healthy suggest there are now some more useful heuristics for eating more healthily.
Prediction 61
In the future, there will be so many new kinds of whales, we’ll all be sick of looking at them.
No.
Prediction 62
Two things that will never improve in the future are airlines and bicycle seats.
Take the Concorde: commercial flights have become slower at least. We passed the peak on this dimension.
Prediction 63
The theory of evolution will be scientifically debunked in your lifetime.
No.
Prediction 64
The next 100 years will be a search for better perception instead of better vision.
Let’s hope.
Prediction 65
In the future, science will gradually free us from the optical illusions that restrict our view of reality.
As with 64 this is Adams’ softening up the reader to his woo. (How to perform affirmations then follows.)
Conclusion
So, how did 1997 Adams do? I think somewhat mixed, though he definitely seemed to be broadly correct on the way the internet would change both work and society. As you can see, most of the claims aren’t precise enough to be wrong. But they do still seem largely to point at a direction of travel, which over the last 29 years has largely come about.
Judge Claude
Claude’s assessment of Scott Adams as futurist:
Reading through these 65 predictions, what strikes me most is the tension between Adams’ genuine insight and his performative cynicism. At his best — predictions about confusiopolies, subscription dark patterns, algorithmic content filtering, and the gig economy — Adams demonstrated a sharp understanding of how incentive structures shape behaviour at scale. His economics training shows in these moments: he grasped that when comparison shopping becomes costly, companies will rationally invest in making it costlier still. The confusiopoly concept alone has proven genuinely useful for understanding markets from mobile phone contracts to insurance products.
Yet many predictions reveal the limits of cynicism as a forecasting methodology. Predictions framed as “people are stupid and will get stupider” or “everything will get worse in amusing ways” aren’t really predictions at all — they’re attitudes dressed up as analysis. The comic exaggeration that made Dilbert entertaining (“all work will be done by one guy”) also rendered many claims unfalsifiable. When your prediction is “things will trend in this direction, comically,” you can claim vindication whether the trend materialises modestly or dramatically. This is clever rhetoric but poor forecasting.
Adams’ later life trajectory offers a cautionary tale about where unmoored cynicism leads. The same pattern-matching that let him recognise corporate absurdity in the 1990s led him to see “master persuasion” in Trump’s simplistic rhetoric — interpreting incompetence as 4D chess. His shadowbanning complaints presaged a persecution complex that culminated in the racist comments that ended his syndication. The deathbed Pascal’s Wager conversion feels almost too on-brand: even his faith was framed as a hedge, a bet, a clever manipulation of expected value. One wonders whether Adams ever held a belief that wasn’t primarily about being smarter than everyone else. In the end, the man who built a career on mocking pointy-haired bosses became a cautionary tale about what happens when cleverness substitutes for wisdom, and when seeing through everything leaves you believing in nothing.
Footnotes
On 13 August 2015, Adams called Trump a “clown genius” and predicted he would become president. At the time, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gave Trump only a 2% chance of winning the Republican nomination. Adams countered with a “98% chance of Trump winning the whole thing.”↩︎
Adams, a trained hypnotist, argued that Trump was using actual persuasion techniques he recognised from his training: “A lot of the things that the media were reporting as sort of random insults and bluster and just Trump being Trump, looked to me like a lot of deep technique that I recognized from the fields of hypnosis and persuasion.”↩︎
Claude footnote: Adams defined a “linguistic kill shot” as “an engineered set of words that changes or ends an argument decisively.” Examples include Trump’s nicknames: “Low-energy Jeb”, “Lil’ Marco”, and “Crooked Hillary”. Adams argued these worked because they were visual and memorable: “The moment I heard ‘low energy’, I couldn’t see him any other way.”↩︎
Claude footnote: Trump himself later adopted the term “the weave” to describe his speaking style: “I do the weave… I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together.” Critics, including linguist John McWhorter, characterised this as rambling rather than rhetorical sophistication. Adams elaborated his theory of Trump as “Master Persuader” in his 2017 book Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.↩︎
Claude footnote: A 2024 JAMA Network Open study found that the global healthspan-lifespan gap has widened over the last two decades, now averaging 9.6 years. The US has the largest gap at 12.4 years. WHO data shows that while life expectancy increased by 6.4 years between 2000-2019, healthy life expectancy increased by only 5.3 years — meaning people are living longer, but spending more years in poor health.↩︎
Claude footnote: This relationship is well-documented in personality psychology research. Studies consistently show that Openness to Experience correlates negatively with conservatism (r ≈ −0.07), while Conscientiousness correlates positively with conservatism (r ≈ 0.06). The effect sizes are small but robust across multiple countries. Openness predicts both social and economic liberalism; Conscientiousness is more predictive of social conservatism specifically.↩︎
Claude footnote: Mouse jigglers — both hardware devices and software applications — saw usage “skyrocket” following the COVID-19 pandemic’s shift to remote work. They prevent computers from going to sleep, fooling monitoring software. Companies have responded with detection methods, and employees have been fired for using them. A Raconteur survey found over 80% of workers believe their employers monitor them too much.↩︎
Claude footnote: Adams publicly complained in 2016-2017 that Twitter was shadowbanning him due to his Trump support. He tweeted at then-CEO Jack Dorsey, characterising the alleged shadowbanning as “treason.” Twitter’s Head of Trust & Safety contacted Adams to assure him no one was being shadowbanned. Adams acknowledged his evidence was anecdotal: “there is either a mass delusion about Twitter shadowbanning political speech on one side … or something evil is happening at Twitter.”↩︎
Claude footnote: The evidence is mixed. A University of Texas Medical Branch study found men taking semaglutide had 4.5× higher risk of erectile dysfunction and nearly double the risk of testosterone deficiency. However, some users report increased libido after weight loss improved their body image and confidence. Low sex drive is not listed as an official side effect, and more research is needed. Perhaps not quite what Adams had in mind as an “aphrodisiac.”↩︎
Claude footnote: As of September 2025, only 29 countries have women serving as Heads of State and/or Government — less than 10% of the number of men who have held these positions. Women’s share in parliaments has grown from 11% to 26% since 1995. However, progress has stalled since 2023, and at current rates, gender equality in the highest positions won’t be reached for another 130 years.↩︎
Claude footnote: In January 2026, Adams — diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in May 2025 — announced his conversion to Christianity, explicitly framing it as Pascal’s Wager: “If it turns out that there’s nothing there, I’ve lost nothing… If it turns out there is something there and the Christian model is the closest to it, I win.” He stated: “I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior.” Adams died on 13 January 2026. The theological reception was mixed, with some celebrating and others questioning the genuineness of a wager-based conversion.↩︎
Claude footnote: Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop is perhaps the exemplar here. The company paid $145,000 in 2018 to settle allegations of false advertising over jade eggs claimed to “balance hormones” and “prevent uterine prolapse.” Products have included a $75 “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle (subject to an exploding-candle lawsuit), “Psychic Vampire Repellent” spray, and stickers falsely claimed to use “NASA space suit material” to rebalance body energy.↩︎
Claude footnote: Adams coined the term ‘confusopoly’ in this book. It has since become a serious academic concept in economics, referring to markets where firms deliberately make price structures or product attributes unnecessarily confusing to deter comparison shopping. Classic examples include mobile phone contracts, banking fees, and insurance products. Adams, who holds an MBA from UC Berkeley and a BA in economics from Hartwick College, may have been drawing on formal training here.↩︎
Claude footnote: The FTC has taken this seriously. A 2024 review of 642 subscription websites and apps found 76% employed at least one “dark pattern,” with 70% failing to provide cancellation information. The FTC finalised a “Click to Cancel” rule in October 2024 (later struck down on procedural grounds). Major enforcement actions have targeted Adobe and Amazon Prime for deceptive cancellation practices.↩︎
Claude footnote: The Netherlands became the first country to legalise euthanasia in 2002. As of 2025, it’s legal in Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, all six Australian states, and (pending regulation) Portugal and Uruguay. The UK voted in 2024 to advance historic assisted dying legislation. In Belgium, assisted dying rose from 0.2% of deaths in 2002-03 to 2.4% in 2021.↩︎