No, the article argues that Adams was good at one very specific thing (writing silly comics about the workplace) and bad at everything else. It's very clear on that point. It argues that later in life he lost his self-awareness of his own ineptitude and began to falsely believe he was smarter than everyone.
Keep reading. The central thesis of the article/eulogy is that Adams wanted to be successful at something more serious than Dilbert but was bad at everything else he tried.
It talks about his first new business attempt with the Dilberito, which was terrible. It quotes, it "could have been designed only by a food technologist or by someone who eats lunch without much thought to taste".
Then he tries to run a restaurant, which he is also bad at. Even Adams realizes he is bad at it. "After every workday, Adams and the waiters get together and laugh long into the night together about how bad a boss Adams is!"
Then he tries his hand at writing philosophy, which he is also terrible at. The article spends two long sections describing just how bad his books "God's Debris" and "The Religion War" are.
Then the article describes how Adams claimed himself to be a master hypnotist/manipulator in the most delusional and cringey way possible.
Then the article talks about Adams' many terrible political predictions. E.g. "His most famous howler was that if Biden won in 2020, Republicans “would be hunted” and his Republican readers would “most likely be dead within a year”."
Then there's how he responded to liberals beginning to see him as an enemy when he was predicting Trump would win the 2016 election: "As he had done so many other times during his life, he resolved the conflict in the dumbest, cringiest, and most public way possible: a June 2016 blog post announcing that he was endorsing Hillary Clinton, for his own safety, because he suspected he would be targeted for assassination if he didn’t"
Then in 2023, Adams stupidly gets himself cancelled.
> There are plenty of quotes like this one
No, there aren't. While the article/eulogy says a number of positive things about Adams, that very faint praise at the beginning is the only place the article describes him as being even only-slightly-above-average intelligence at anything other than Dilbert.
What it does mention several times is that Adams thought himself cleverer than everyone else. For example (describing Adams' thoughts):
> Thesis: I am cleverer than everyone else.
> Antithesis: I always lose to the Pointy-Haired Boss.
> Synthesis: I was trying to be rational. But most people are irrational sheep; they can be directed only by charismatic manipulators who play on their biases, not by rational persuasion. But now I’m back to being cleverer than everyone else, because I noticed this. Also, I should become a charismatic manipulator.
But the tone here is mocking Adams and not endorsing his view.
Thanks. I often think of it as a minor character flaw in myself that I spend the time replying to things that really aren't important. Your comment made me smile.
