Astral Codex Ten

Banjo Kildeer

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Banjo Kildeer

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Banjo Kildeer is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 16, 2024 and January 21, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Banjo Kildeer blames the law for offering addicts the choice between a $100 fine vs. treatment”; “Banjo Kildeer writes : This is a wonderful piece. Your love for Scott Adams shines through”. It most often appears alongside 4chan, 80,000 Hours, @Ashwin V.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: September 16, 2024
  • Last seen: January 21, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Open Thread 347
September 16, 2024 · Original source
1: Good comments on last week’s links post: Andy McKenzie on whether selection really disproves balancing theories of personality and schizophrenia, and multiple layers of clarification on the Australia/Jews/NYT doxxing story. And several people had good comments on Oregon’s now-repealed drug decriminalization law. Banjo Kildeer blames the law for offering addicts the choice between a $100 fine vs. treatment; the fine was so low that almost everyone paid and kept using. Kerry blames the police for not enforcing it properly. And an email correspondent linked this study suggesting that Oregon’s increase in drug deaths had nothing to do with the law, but was a simple effect of growing fentanyl availability.
Inline links: links post, on whether selection really disproves balancing theories of personality and schizophrenia, multiple layers of clarification on the Australia/Jews/NYT doxxing story, blames the law for, blames the police for, this study suggesting that
Highlights From The Comments On Scott Adams
January 21, 2026 · Original source
…which makes me more confident that I landed on the tone I wanted. And several people commented that the essay seemed pro-Adams, or made them like Adams more: Joel McKinnon writes: As a chronic sufferer of TDS I've fallen into the "the friend of my enemy is my enemy," and long stopped having any respect for this other Scott A. The post did a great job of contextualizing a complicated and intelligent man's life and ideas. Jonathan Lipschutz writes: I loved Dilbert! He had a remarkable ability to identify the absurdity of life/reality. I was not aware of so much other material/information/‘wisdom’?!/ideas. It seems to me he was a true, great contributor to America and Americans and Western intellectual discourse in the vain of other greats like Mark Twain. What I learned from your piece, which was absolutely amazing in its own right and shined throughout as a tribute and labor of love, was [Adams’] humanity. He was labeled as a racist, which i believe to be bunk and a lack of honesty/courage with addressing the point/argument he was making. He was an eminently flawed human being, like all humans, but he was also acutely aware of this and tried to help others with humor and honesty. Pointing out ways humans fall short, including himself. But he used his special powers in the service of intellectual honesty/inquisitiveness/love for his fellow human beings. Banjo Kildeer writes: This is a wonderful piece. Your love for Scott Adams shines through. @disgruntledcho1 writes: [This] made me actually feel warmly for Scott Adams, a thus-far unparalleled feat. The most important question is whether Scott Adams himself would have appreciated the post, and this convinces me that he would have. One of Adams’ favorite persuasion topics was what he called “Two Movies On One Screen”, where people would come away from the same event with totally different narratives - for example, a Democrat might watch a Trump speech and conclude that Trump had openly and clearly announced his racism, while a Republican watching the same speech might think that Trump had just said something patriotic and hadn’t mentioned race at all. Whatever his opinion on what I said, I’m sure he would have found your reactions hilarious. … 2: Was I Unfair To Adams? … Leo Abstract writes: [The problem with your eulogy] isn’t that it was harsh--he was harsher to himself, frequently. (i.e. when he said he realized at age 8, sadly looking at his nerdy little face in the mirror, he was gonna have to ‘get rich’). [The] problem is it was just wrong, and seemed badly(or un-)researched. His interest in persuasion was teaching people when others were doing it to them, not teaching them to do it to others. His interest in Trump was Trump doing it BACK at the media, not on his poor voters. Disagree. Adams’ book Win Bigly includes Persuasion Tips, persuasion checklists, and a Persuasion Resource Reading List, all of which take it as a given that he is teaching you to persuade others: I haven’t watched his videos, but they have names like You Could Be MUCH More Persuasive, The Persuasion Playbook (“Learn practical techniques to harness the power of persuasion”), and Persuasion Techniques That Will Improve Your Business And Life. Adams absolutely did not limit his interest in Trump’s persuasion to the media, and praised Trump (for example) using persuasion techniques to take down other Republican candidates. You can find his discussion of how Adams “publicly predicted Ben Carson’s demise” after Trump acted out a mocking version of Carson’s description of getting stabbed in the belt buckle (according to Adams, a masterful example of “visual persuasion”). Leo continues: A good example would be spinning a whole tale about him as an ‘ivermectin true believer’, when he was open about his skepticism. if you knew his history with medically-assisted suicide, you’d know he didn’t plan on fighting the cancer and only did IVM because his fans begged him. I half-apologize for this one. I didn’t try to “spin a whole tale” about Adams as “an ivermectin true believer”. What I said was: » “In 2024, diagnosed with terminal cancer, Adams decided to treat it via ivermectin, according to a protocol recommended by fellow right-wing contrarian Dr. William Makis. This doesn’t seem to me like a story about a cynic milking right-wingers for the grift. It sounds like a true believer.” I stand by that paragraph. I don’t think someone who was milking right-wingers as a cynical grift would have gone so far as to trust their recommendations on what to take for his cancer. I think Adams became a sincere right-winger, and so was willing to listen to right-wing medical advice. But I agree that it was written sloppily and sort of suggests he was an ivermectin true believer. He wasn’t, and I apologize for that. I later realized I didn’t need to read tea leaves about this - he says, very explicitly, in one of his books, that yes, after getting attacked by too many left-wing trolls, he decided to commit to fully joining the right wing: » “If you want to see the world more clearly, avoid joining a tribe. But if you are going to war, leave your clear thinking behind and join a tribe. Trumped joined the Republican tribe to win the presidency. Now I was joining the Trump tribe. For a war against Hillbullies [ie pro-Hillary Clinton bullies]. I was all in.” After I made some of these arguments to Leo, he said: I do think that people who listened to thousands of hours of him speaking off-the-cuff might have a better understanding than someone attempting to gain the same by reading a few of his old blog posts. This is a fair criticism. I tried listening to a couple of his shows, and they had a different, friendlier tone than his books / interviews / tweets. Arguably Adams thought of formal written communication as a place to do manipulation, and verbal communication as a cozier spot where he could relate to people normally and explain all the manipulation he was doing. @Ashwin V writes: If you knew anything about Scott, you would know that he never considered anyone a "lesser human" as you've so confidently asserted. He was streaming and trying to pass on his wisdom on his death bed. This was a response to my claim that Adams “longed to be a manipulator of lesser humans”. Several people including Ashwin objected that Adams didn’t see anyone as lesser, nor think of manipulation as demeaning. For example, nutter_just: “Your error is in thinking you must be a lesser human to be manipulable. My impression was Scott believed everyone was like this even himself which is why he believed self affirmations worked. It’s you manipulating your dumb self.” Again, I’ll half-apologize. I regret my exact framing (“lesser humans”), which I think was unnecessarily inflammatory since it implies he was sort of thinking in those terms. But I think he was doing a bad thing which requires that on some philosophical level he has to be treating other people as his lessers in an unacceptable way, even if he wasn’t consciously thinking that they were. I think trying to manipulate people is inherently demeaning to the dignity of humankind. Nor is it exonerating to say “I also manipulate myself” (even if this is true). For analogy, suppose that Adams was a literal telepathic mind controller. If he used his powers on himself (mind controlling himself to work harder), that sounds like a good lifehack. But if he used his powers to turn everyone else into his zombie slaves, he would be offending the dignity of humankind, and “I also use my powers on myself!” would be no excuse. There are a thousand edge cases, complications, things that are sort of manipulation but not quite, and ways that some of those things might be permissible for the greater good. But none of them change the fact that in the simplest and most typical of cases, like the telepathic mind controller with his zombie slaves, manipulation is wrong. One might object that there are simple, typical cases on the other side too. When a job candidate shaves, dresses nicely, and gives a firm handshake, this is in some sense “manipulating” the interviewer, since it’s an attempt to influence his decision through some channel other than facts. I can’t draw a perfect bright line here between the good and the bad cases, but I would apply tests like “is this an attempt to more effectively convey true information?” (eg when I shave, it conveys that I’m capable of remembering to shave and care a lot about the interview), “is this something where failing to do the thing would also convey even more information?” (eg if I didn’t shave, it would falsely suggest I really didn’t want the job), and “is this something where the target has basically given implied consent to this level of manipulation” (eg the interviewer wants and even hopes that people will dress nicely for the interview). I think some of Adams’ manipulations seem closer to the bad cases than the good ones. He wrote about the moment he decided to use his persuasion powers to convince America to elect Trump. One day when he was doing his dispassionate observer act, he heard about Hillary’s estate tax plan and realized it would cost his estate lots of money. He had no particular principled stance against it (“You can argue whether an estate tax is fair or unfair, but fairness is an argument for idiots and children”) but concluded that: This was personal. This was also the day I decided to move from observer to persuader. Until then I was happy to simply observe and predict. But once Clinton announced her plans to use government force to rob me on my deathbed, it was war. Persuasion war.” Accepting for the sake of argument that Adams’ persuasive powers are as impressive as he thinks, he manipulated thousands of people who might have stood to benefit from an estate tax, or who sincerely believed in fairness-based arguments for an estate tax, to vote against their own interests/beliefs, in order to enrich him personally1. I think this requires some sort of standpoint where you consider their agency and interests less important than your own, and that’s why I described him as wanting to manipulate “lesser humans”. This coexists with him often being very nice, with many people saying his podcast helped them become better people, etc. @janiesaysyay writes: This essay is a great demonstration of the kind of leftist, myopic thinking Scott [Adams] was fighting. This is how [Alexander] describes [Coffee With Scott Adams], one of the most influential online shows: » "I had been vaguely aware that he had some community around him, but on the event of his death, I tried watching an episode or two of his show. I couldn’t entirely follow..." “Some community"?! CWSA was one of the first long running, online, interactive, alternative news shows. Scott was a trailblazer host with his reasonable, thoughtful take on current events, often describing the "2 screens” views of both the left and right political opinions on current events. Scott [Adams]' question and answer discussions with his audience brought varied insights, and gave Americans a nuanced view of news. At the end of his life, Scott was highly influential in American thought, culture and politics. CWSA made it acceptable to be an American, someone who was proud of the country, unashamed of their race; proud of the culture, and proud of the heritage which built the country. This made me wonder whether I was underestimating the reach of Adams’ podcast, so I tried to find statistics. CWSA ranks 50th on Apple’s top 100 news/politics podcasts2. It’s very close to the rankings of Jen Psaki (Biden’s ex-press-secretary) and Al Franken (ex-Senator), but also to very many people I have never heard of. I’m not sure how to interpret this. Comparing YouTube subscribers of Adams and various other podcasts I’ve heard of, all numbers in thousands: Joe Rogan: 21,000
Inline links: writes, writes, writes, writes, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8Dya!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6aea0e56-b1a1-48ca-84ab-406017ae27a1_1618x462.png, You Could Be MUCH More Persuasive, The Persuasion Playbook, Persuasion Techniques That Will Improve Your Business And Life, writes, nutter_just, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!r4fL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d643c5f-b24c-4f01-baad-963686d680da_560x174.jpeg, 1, writes, 2, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wOcC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F141d78d7-8756-4ed6-bc53-081bac795a0a_728x250.png